En las esferas del arte y la literatura, España encuentra también su propio estilo en obras y fenómenos literarios de la época: La Celestina, el Amadís, el teatro de Juan del Encina y el interés de las gentes cultas por la poesía popular (el Romancero).

Con el reinado de Carlos V (1516-1556), nieto de los Reyes Católicos, se consolida la hegemonía española. La política europea, concebida por FernandoV, culmina en la coronacion del nieto como emperador de Alemania. A la era de los descubrimientos sigue la de exploración y comquistadel Nuevo Mundo. España, a pesar de sus poderosos rivales—Francia, Inglaterra, el Papado—maneja las riendas de la política universal durante casi todo el siglo XVI.

Se abre así una larga época de plenitud, llamada Siglo de Oro, que algunos historiadores sitúan entre 1500 y 1680. También se habla de los "siglos de oro"—el XVI y el XVII. 

• De un lado, la narración poética, idealizada o de pura invención fantástica:
• Libros de caballerías
• Novela sentimental
• Novela morisca
• Novela pastoril
• De otro lado, la imitación de la vida, pintura crítica de la sociedad, en la novela picaresca.

• El poético, retórico y artificioso
• El de la elaboración literaria de la lenguage vulgar o hablada comúnmente.

La divergencia de materia temática se corresponde con dos niveles de prosa:
• El poético, retórico y artificioso
• El de la elaboración literaria de la lenguage vulgar o hablada comúnmente.
• volver arriba

From the Dictionary of the Literature of the Iberian Peninsula edited by Bleiberg, Ihrie, and Pérez (Greenwood Press, Westport & London, 1993)

PICARESQUE, a type of fiction. The term picaresque novel has been applied to numerous long narrations written in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Spain, that is, as an historical designation, and also, by extension, to texts similar to them in European letters up to the present. These narratives, usually the fictional autobiographies of humbly born individuals, are among the most innovative and influential texts in Spanish literary history. The protagonists are often anti-heroes that begin their lives as victims of circumstance, but through experience become rogues and rascals. The fictional rogue or "pícaro" narrates his (or occasionally her) tale from its ignominious beginnings to his present vantage point. He has been born to unsavory parents and orphaned, or for some other reason compelled to leave home, at an early age. Almost immediately, the pícaro suffers a bad experience, a rude awakening to the harshness of existence, that makes him realize that he, alone, must fend for himself in the world; He moves from one master to another, often mistreated and hungry, and learns to survive through stealth and guile. During this educational process, the pícaro becomes an adept trickster, even exchanging roles with his deceivers. Yet his social and economic ambitions are generally frustrated, and real advancement eludes him. In the meantime, he observes society with a satirical eye and amuses the reader with his episodic adventures, linguistic virtuosity, and sardonic views. At the point where he is writing his tale, he has usually reached a milestone in his life that gives him pause for reflection-marriage, economic change, imprisonment, some other disaster, or emigration to America. Moreover, he has gained sufficient self-knowledge to offer an explanation for his present state, frequently dishonorable.

The first text in which the form and essential features of the genre appear is the anonymous La Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes v de sus fortunas y adversidades (1554; The Life of Lazarillo tie Tormes. His Fortunes and Misfortunes 1973) Antecedents of ‘Lazarillo maybe recognized in the characters style and episodes of El libro de huen amor (1343; The Book of Good Lovi 1972) el Arcipreste de Talavera’s Corhacho (1498; Little Sermon’ on Sin 1959) and the Celestina (1499; The Spanish Bawd, 1964), or in the tone and structure of Apuleius 5 The Golden Ass. Nevertheless, the originality of Lazarillo is remarkable, especially if one takes into account the chivalric, pastoral and sentimental novels in vogue during the Renaissance. Lazarillo displays many features in parodic response to heroic and idealistic fiction, for example, the pícaro’s ignoble birth and materialistic values. Lazarillo is a short, ironic work with a circular structure, consisting of seven tratados or chapters in which Lazarillo serves various masters, first a crafty blind man, an avaricious priest, and a squire as poor as himself. His childhood is recounted in sympathetic and humorous detail, and his adult life, subtly implied to be more reprehensible, glossed over rapidly. The entire narrative is directed to a fictitious reader, Vuestra Merced (Your Worship), who has requested an explanation of the caso (case or affair), in the final tratado implied to be Lazarillo’s sharing of his wife with his patron the archpriest. The tale is narrated so that the reader comprehends how Lazarillo arrived at his final state of dishonor, ironically referred to as the height of his good fortune, and that his version of his life is selective and does not disclose all.

The pícaro is an inconsistent, tragicomic character in conflict with the corrupt society he satirizes, yet in part emulates in order to survive. He inspired a wide spectrum of attitudes on the part of authors and readers, who alternately regarded him as scoundrel, parvenu, rebel, outsider, carnival clown, existential hero, or victim of injustice. Perhaps for these reasons as well as others, authors of picaresque narratives often elaborated complicated rhetorical structures in regard to the reader that encourage ambiguity or indicate multiple levels of meaning. Historical and individual differences in reader expectation and taste, as well as the ironic tone and linguistic complexity of picaresque discourse, have occasioned diversity in interpretation.

The generalized overview of the picaresque presented at the beginning of this essay is based on characteristics encountered in Lazarillo and Guzmán, frequently imitated in texts that follow, and adapted by modern writers and critics to form their idea of the picaresque; that is, it is a composite arrived at with the benefit (or limitations) of a modern perspective. However, some seventeenth-c. texts don’t partake of even most of these generic attributes. Strictly speaking, they are neither novels nor picaresque. Many authors overburden their particular versions of the picaresque with moral commentary, social satire, a burlesque treatment, and other forms of autobiography. Only Lazarillo and Guzmán conform well to the stipulation that the protagonist develop through his experience like the hero of a modern novel.

These are some of the conundrums that have caused a certain theoretical disarray in picaresque criticism. At the risk of being reductive, one might say that views of the genre have polarized, though there exist various strict and broad definitions and some gradations in between. One extreme is a taxonomy of characteristics that links a picaresque Weltanschauung to its narrative structure and relates both to similar modern novels dealing with the tribulations of the social. outcast. Hence, the unitary point of view, episodic form, and Sisyphean action are associated with the pessimism, frustration, and cynicism of the pícaro, who is attempting to learn how to survive in a hostile environment. At the opposite pole is a far less restrictive idea of the picaresque that allows for ideological and formal variation. It regards the picaresque as a protean genre, treating as essential only the bare bones of the narrative: a picaresque subject matter and action. Also germane to this view of the picaresque is a self-conscious quality. The author’s frame of reference as he composes his text is derived from other picaresque narrations, though he may reject some conventions and embrace others. The second view allows for comic or serious treatment of the pícaro hence El Buscón and La Pícara Justina fall within the taxonomy, as do the picaresque exemplary novels of Cervantes, usually banished for being inconsistently autobiographical or fundamentally dialogical, open, tolerant, and representative of a multitude of points of view. Yet they are obviously written in response to previous picaresque texts.

Another area of debate is the nature of picaresque "realism," often touted as an essential characteristic. It has been suggested that its importance does not stem from providing an accurate depiction of seventeenth-century Spanish lowlife or urban poverty, the world of thieves, delinquents, and vagabonds, but rather from its reflecting a mental universe of social marginality. The pícaro pretends to be what he is not and exposes the greater society’s false code of honor, according to which achieving social aspirations depends on deceiving others with appearances.