Meaning of picaresque | Babel Free

Definitions

1. Of or pertaining to adventurers or rogues.
2. Characteristic of a genre of Spanish satiric novel dealing with the adventures of a roguish hero.

Equivalents

Examples

“The blue and white of the Murano background and the frankly picaresque tramp seem to form⟳ strange bed-fellows for the supper-party below stairs into which any gentleman's gentleman of the siècle de Dr. [Samuel] Johnson might have⟳ walked at any moment. [Describing an adaptation of Carlo Goldoni's The Servant of Two Masters (1746).]”

“A mere piece of roguery told in the abstract, without the proper picaresque ornaments, its manifold sinuosities and dexterities, has no interest⟳ for the reader; it may recommend⟳ the executor of it to the administration of a cat-o-nine-tails, or to an honourable post⟳ in the gallies: but there is no music in it without the proper accompaniments.”

“Spain became celebrated about the end⟳ of this century for her novels in the picaresque style, of which Lazarillo de Tormes is the oldest extant specimen.”

“He [Daniel Defoe] produced an amazing variety of wares: newspapers, magazines, ghost stories, biographies, journals, memoirs, satires, picaresque romances, essays on religion, reform⟳, trade⟳, projects, – in all more than two hundred works.”

“Opening in France just before the Revolution and concluding just after the attack on the Tuileries, [Rafael] Sabatini's novel deftly combines historical romance, picaresque novel and revenge tragedy.”

“The picaresque novel finds its origins in the humanist search⟳ for an expansion of the historiographical genre. [...] The protagonist of the picaresque novel is the pícaro, a character of lowly descent who, by passing through a wide array of professions, attempts to rise⟳ in social standing.”

CEFR level