Picaresque Novel

The picaresque novel is a generic variety of the novel that arose in sixteenth-century Spain and recounts the adventures of a resourceful rogue (the pícaro) who, wandering the world and changing masters and occupations, survives through cunning, deception, and inventiveness. The narration is usually conducted in the first person and has an episodic structure — a series of independent adventures strung upon the figure of the hero. The picaresque novel satirically depicts various social strata and exposes their vices through the gaze of the social 'lower depths'. Its founding work is the anonymous tale The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes; the genre was also developed by the authors of Guzmán de Alfarache and Gil Blas. The picaresque novel influenced the development of the European realist novel. In Ukrainian literature a kindred phenomenon is the Baroque tradition of wandering plots, as well as humorous everyday prose with images of resourceful, witty heroes from among the common people.