Mutants of the picaresque

The Postmodernist problem of the relationship between “story” and “history” is approached via the picaresque. Certain characteristics of the Genre are assumed, notably that it concerns the autobiography of a traveller in the margin of conventional society, offering an ambiguous view of contemporary values. Cervantes transformed the picaro from rogue into outsider, internalising the notion of a journey by inserting it into language, and casting doubt on authoriality in autobiography. Noting the eighteenth century mistrust of “story”, the interaction between Moll Flanders and her society is evaluated, largely in terms of the dual narratorial voice, which complicates the notion of identity. This resides largely in language itself, involving not only the protagonist's name, but the invention of a self in interaction with others. Through the identification of language and money, the picara's journey is depicted in terms of a transaction; and it is suggested that Moll's alleged reduction of her world to financial terms, should be seen as a metalanguage to codify emotional experience. Although A Sport of Nature is not offered as autobiography it concerns the invention of a self. The postmodernist author turns even “history” into “story”. However, an ideological problem arises since the picara Hillela, as a “sport of nature”, subverts her own “validity” and undermines a dialectic with the reader

Aesthetics · Art · Biography · Dialectic · Epistemology · Ideology · Linguistics · Literature · Politics · Sociology · Early Modern Spanish Literature · History · Law · Marriage and Sexual Relationships · Philippine History and Culture · Philosophy

• Inventing innocence

  Open Access•Johan Geertsema•Journal of Literary Studies•1997

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• Appendix

  Open Access•Dorothy Driver•The Journal of Commonwealth…•1992

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• Whigs and Hunters

  Edward Palmer Thompson•Whigs and Hunters•1990

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• Defoe and Fictional Time

  Maximillian E Novak, Paul K Alkon•Eighteenth-Century Studies•1980

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• Cervantes

  Richard L Predmore, Lowry Nelson•Hispania•1970

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• Defoe and Casuistry

  David W Tarbet, G A Starr•Eighteenth-Century Studies•1972

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• The Law of Genre

  Jacques Derrida, Avital Ronell•Critical Inquiry•1980

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