Transgression and Subversion

Gender in the Picaresque Novel

Maren Lickhardt, Gregor Schuhen, Hans Rudolf Velten, Maren Lickhardt, Gregor Schuhen, Hans Rudolf Velten

• Publisher: transcript Verlag
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9783837644005
• eBook ISBN: 9783839444009
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Is the pícaro, the roguish hero of early modern Spanish adventure fiction, a 'real man'? What position does he hold in the gender hierarchy of his fictional social context? Why is the pícara so 'non-female'? What effect has her gender constitution on her fictional social context?

In terms of a gendered subject, the picaresque figure has hardly been analyzed so far. Although scholars have recognized it as a transgressive and subversive model, the 'queer' effect of the figure is yet to be examined. With regard to the categories of class, generation, topography, and gender, the contributions assembled in this volume explore Spanish, French, English, and German novels narratologically from the perspective of culture and gender theories.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Transgression and Subversion. Far from Gender? An Introduction
• The Parent Trap: Mothers and Others in the Spanish Picaresque
• Between Subject, Object, and Abject: Masculinities in the Spanish Picaresque
• The Charms of Circe: Narrative Persuasion in Guzmán de Alfarache
• Gender Trouble Without Subversion: Libro de entretenimiento de la Pícara Justina
• Genealogy, Gender, and Genre in Alonso de Castillo Solórzano’s La Garduña de Sevilla (1642)
• Body and Gender in Till Eulenspiegel Inversions of Masculinity in the 16th century
• Subversion and Stabilization of the Sexes by Transgression in Grimmelshausen’s Courasche (1669)
• Role Switching and Gender Marking in the Picaresque Novel
• Picaresque Narrative and Gender Construction in Wilhelm Raabe’s Lorenz Scheibenhart (1858) and Aus dem Lebensbuch des Schulmeisterleins Michel Haas (1860)
• Masks to Mock the Light: The Authentic Pícara in Marivaux’s La Vie de Marianne
• Virile Maturity, Female Linearity, and the Transformation of the Picaresque Novel: Tobias Smollett’s Roderick Random and Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders
• Contributors