| This dissertation investigates Renaissance and contemporary picaresque texts within the context of pathological discourses, employing a comparative analysis of these two critical and historical periods in order to interrogate them through cultural and literary approaches. By diachronically comparing these texts, I illustrate how the traditional picaro and the contemporary golfo have responded to the political and social forces that they underwrite. I examine how the Spanish picaro has evolved and has been represented in a society undergoing profound transformations during both periods, shifting from a still feudal society to the first stages of capitalism, from a rural to an urban space, and from an agricultural to a pre-industrial economy.;Many parallels can be drawn between the picaro and the golfo, but chief among them is the topic of exclusion, which is the main focus of my dissertation. Specifically, I trace the dehumanization of the picaro (and the golfo)---exacerbated by his conduct, jargon, and physiognomie- and the confrontation that results from the choice between social conformity and criminal activity. Starting with the analysis of social and linguistic anomie and carefully proceeding with a close reading of Lazarillo de Tormes, Estebanillo Gonzalez, La lucha por la vida, and La familia de Pascual Duarte, this work explores the picaro´s life through a marginal underworld. I also analyze, as a recurrent and symptomatic feature, the linguistic characterization of the traditional picaro: la germania. This not only reflects specific characteristics of the picaro, but also the social and linguistic contours of the subculture in which he struggles to survive. This idiolectal mechanism---imprinted since Lazarillo---finds its most forceful expression in a universe where the "putarazanas", "galloferos" and "galgas", together with their vulgarisms and grammatical incorrectness, outline a torn and violent society. |
