Lazarillo de Tormes (redirected from Lazarillo)

Lazarillo de Tormes

16th-century picaresque novel about a runaway youth who lives by his wits serving, in succession, a blind beggar and several unworthy ecclesiastics. [Span. Lit.: Haydn & Fuller, 415]

See : Adventurousness

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Lazarillo de Tormes

(full title, The Life of Lazarillo of Tormes, His Fortunes and Adversities; La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de sus fortunas y adversidades), a Spanish novella published anonymously in Burgos, Alcalá de Henares, and Antwerp in 1554. It depicted the fate of a boy who involuntarily became a rogue in his harsh struggle with poverty and hunger.

One of the most vivid works of Renaissance literature, Lazarillo de Tormes laid the foundation for the picaresque novel, which was a source for the European realistic novel. The novella was banned by the Inquisition in 1559, and from 1573 until the early 19th century it was published in Spain in a “corrected” version. The anonymous Second Part of Lazarillo de Tormes, inferior to the first artistically, appeared in 1555. In 1620, Juan de Luna published a new second part that intensified the book’s anticlerical satire. Continuations and imitations of Lazarillo appeared until the mid-20th century. The novella was first published in Russian in 1775.

PUBLICATIONS

In Russian translation:
Zhizn ‘Lasaril’o s Tormesa, ego nevzgody i zlokliucheniia. [Translation and introduction by K. N. Derzhavin.] Moscow, 1955.

REFERENCES

González Palencia, A. Del “lazarillo” a Quevedo. Madrid, 1946.
Siebenmann, G. Über Sprache und Stil im “Lazarillo de Tormes.” Bern, 1953.
Macaya Lahmann, E. Bibliografía del “Lazarillo de Tormes.” San José, Costa Rica, 1935.

V. K. IASNYI