The Lazarillo de Tormes
In this lesson from a PROFESSOR we are going to take a long and hard look at one of the most important and significant works of Spanish literature, The Lazarillo de Tormes. It is curious that a work of this magnitude, which shows the brilliant beginning of the Spanish picaresque in times of Golden age, continues to live today a certain controversy about its author, despite the fact that, despite being considered the germ of the modern novel, but without a creator, a few years ago a researcher gave a name that we will talk about later in this same lesson, not exempt from certain controversy.
Be that as it may, it narrates the vicissitudes of Lázaro, a rogue from Salamanca who has to earn a living as good can to eat, doing any type of work, theft or trick for masters quite little uplifting. However, his plans do not usually go well, although he manages to survive to find his longed for quiet life.
Here begins a long compendium of important information about The Lazarillo de Tormes. He takes good note.
First, we are going to do asummary of The Lazarillo de Tormes. Since the work is divided into treatises, having a total of 7, let's see them one by one.
First Treatise
The play begins with Lázaro de Tormes recounting his childhood in the first person. He is named after him because he was born on the banks of the river that runs through Salamanca. The boy has been an orphan from a very young age, since, at the age of 8, his father serves a knight who fights in front of the Arabs and dies in battle after being forced to do so, accused and condemned for Steal.
Lázaro flees with his mother, who cooks and washes clothes for the Commander of Magdalena's students and grooms. She has relations with the waiter Zaide, who makes better food arrive at the rogue's house. However, his stepfather is caught for stealing.
Later, in an inn, Lázaro will accept a job with a blind man to help him as a guide. However, this man teaches the rogue the harshness of life, barely eating and it is pure greed, so the boy tricks his master into tripping over a stick and escaping.
Second Treatise
In the second Treatise, once the blind man has been abandoned, Lázaro meets a clergyman with whom he decides to work. However, he again meets a greedy man who barely feeds him.
Lazaro steals, already tired, the clergyman's bread for mass, taking it out of the trunk where he was kept after taking the key. But the religious, upon learning of the ruse, since he thought it was the mice who were eating the bread, decides to fire the rogue assistant.
Third Treaty
Lázaro arrives in Toledo and lives off alms for a couple of weeks. Later, he meets a squire, whom he makes his new master. Both will live in a house with little light and without furniture.
The squire appears to have a good family, but in reality he is a very poor man. So the rogue begs and shares what he earns with his master. Thus, until the government prohibits begging, and they go eight days without eating until he can earn a real and send Lazaro to the market.
However, when the owners of the house come to collect the squire, he does not have to pay the rent, so he excuses himself and flees.
Fourth Treaty
Lázaro is without a master, so the neighbors take him to the Friar de la Merced, who will take care of him. This man walks a lot, so the rogue's shoes break after eight days of walking with him. However, the priest gives him a new pair. Even so, Lazarillo gets tired of following him so much in his little edifying life and always with women and leaves him.
Fifth Treaty
In the fifth treatise, Lázaro meets a buldero who, together with the bailiff, tricks people into believing his ideas and buying his fake bulls. Thus, they get many people to believe in miracles, for example. However, after four months of company, the rogue ends up abandoning this master as well.
Sixth Treaty
The next master of the Lazarillo will be a master tambourine painter. But this lasts very little.
At the time, in a church, Lázaro meets a chaplain, who will be the next master. The priest offers him a donkey and four jugs, and orders him to sell water. It is the rogue's first job, earning commissions on Saturdays.
Thus, for four years, they serve to save him and buy his first sword. With this money, Lazaro also improves his appearance and abandons his chaplain and his office.
Treaty Seven
In the last treaty, Lazarus settles with a bailiff. After a short time, the rogue gives up due to the dangerousness of the job.
Thus, until he meets the archpriest of San Salvador, who marries him with his maid. They both live comfortably in a house next to his master, until gossip begins between the priest and the rogue's maid wife.
Finally, after talking about the issue and the wife crying bitterly, Lázaro decides to intervene because this period offers him stability, and after everything he has experienced, for the rogue there is nothing better than that.
For centuries it has been considered The Lazarillo de Tormes as an anonymous work. Being a novel so modern and ahead of its time, that it even served as an inspiration to himself. Miguel de CervantesIt was striking that, no matter how hard it was investigated, no one had been able in decades to come up with a name.
However, the paleographer Mercedes Agulló, in his book Around with the author of Lazarillo, came up with a name in 2010. Apparently, according to his research, the novel would be the work ofDon Diego Hurtado de Mendoza. This is how it emerged from some documents that were in the hands of Lopez de Velasco, in charge of the Andalusian writer's will.
Although the debate is not closed, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza represented a full-blown renaissance man, diplomat and poet, a well-educated and highly respected man in his time who could well be the author of the novel published in 1554.
Hurtado de Mendoza was born in the Alhambra and from a young age received a good education thanks to his wealthy position as the son of Governor Íñigo López de Mendoza. Knowledgeable in literature, history, and even the art of war, he was a Spanish ambassador to Rome, Venice, and England.
As a good military man as he was a cultured man, he was a patron of various writers and painters and was related to Marquis of Santillana, his grandfather, and friend of Lope de Vega, who would extol his literary ability. Furthermore, he possessed one of the richest libraries of his time and was a great humanist.
Moreover, as a man of letters, he introduced new themes, stanzas and meters for his time thanks to the influence of Italian lyric. In fact, works such as the poem stand out from him Fable of Hippomenes and Atalanta or Epistle to Boscan.
