Estebanillo Gonzalez

LA vida y hechos de Estebanillo Gonzdlez: Hombre de buen humor has received relatively little critical attention, and much of what has been written about it is devoted to determining whether it is a genuine autobiography or a work of fiction.' The tendency to view it in these terms can be traced back to Ernest Grossart who identified Esteban Gonzalez with an individual mentioned in several historical accounts of the Netherlands.2 Frank W. Chandler and Fonger de Haan included Estebanillo in their discussions of picaresque fiction, and although de Haan saw some value in its wit and clever plays on words, both he and Chandler relegated it to a position far below that reserved for Lazarillo de Tormes, GuzmAin de Alfarache and El Busc6n.3 The German Hispanist Ludwig Pfandl characterized Estebanillo as a pessimistic panorama of Spanish society,4 whereas Juan Millk y Gimenez, interpreted it as an effective portrayal of man's tragic involvement in war, although in his eyes it lacked the transcendental satire of Lazarillo.5 At about the same time, Millk y Giminez did accord considerable weight to Estebanillo's value as an historical document, an evaluation subsequently bolstered by the positivistic studies of Willis Jones, Arthur Bates, and Ernest Moore, all of whom attempted to show that Estebanillo's memoirs accurately depict verifiable events, persons and places. Angel Valbuena Prat recognized Estebanillo's debt to dominant themes and techniques of picaresque fiction. He faulted the book for its superabundance of minor episodes while praising the author's literary talent and ingenuity, but although he disagreed with most of his predecessors in placing a somewhat higher value upon its artistic merits, he followed them in referring to it as the genuine autobiography of a buffoon.' Not until the 1960's did

Art · Face (sociological concept) · Linguistics · Early Modern Spanish Literature · Philosophy · Spanish Literature and Culture Studies