The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes His Fortune and Adversities

The life of Lazarillo de Tormes is a Spanish novel, written in first person and in epistolary style, whose oldest characteristics date from 1554.1 It tells the autobiographical form of the life of a child, Lázaro de Tormes, in the sixteenth century, from his birth and his childhood until his marriage, already in adulthood. It is considered a precursor of the picaresque novel by elements such as realism, narration in the first person, itinerant structure, service to several masters and moralizing and pessimistic ideology. Lazarillo de Tormes is an ironic and ruthless sketch of the society of the moment, which shows his vices and hypocritical attitudes, especially those of clerics and religious. There are different hypotheses about its authorship. Probably the author was sympathetic to the Erasmian ideas. This motivated the Inquisition to prohibit it and, later, allow its publication, once expurgated. The work was not completely published until the nineteenth century.