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Picaro
The picaresque novel (Spanish: ''picaresca'', from ''pícaro'', for ' rogue' or 'rascal') is a genre of prose fiction. It depicts the adventures of a roguish but appealing hero, usually of low social class, who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. Picaresque novels typically adopt the form of "an episodic prose narrative" with a realistic style. There are often some elements of comedy and satire. The picaresque genre began with the Spanish novel ''Lazarillo de Tormes'' (1554), which was published anonymously during the Spanish Golden Age because of its anticlerical content. Literary works from Imperial Rome published during the 1st–2nd century AD, such as ''Satyricon'' by Petronius and ''The Golden Ass'' by Apuleius had a relevant influence on the picaresque genre and are considered predecessors. Other notable early Spanish contributors to the genre included Mateo Alemán's ''Guzmán de Alfarache'' (1599–1604) and Francisco de Quevedo's ''El Buscón'' (1626). Some o ...
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Guzmán De Alfarache
''Guzmán de Alfarache'' () is a picaresque novel written by Mateo Alemán and published in two parts: the first in Madrid in 1599 with the title , and the second in 1604, titled '. The works tells the first person adventures of a ''picaro'', a young street urchin, as he matures into adulthood. It thus ultimately both recounts adventures and moralizes on those childish excesses. ''Guzmán de Alfarache'', by this means, is conceived as an extensive doctrinal sermon about the sins of society, and was so received by the author's contemporaries, despite the hybrid qualities between an engaging novel and a moralizing discourse. The novel was highly popular in its time. Many editions were published, not only in Spanish, but in French, German, English, Italian, and Latin. The English translation, by James Mabbe, was published in 1622, under alternative titles ''The Rogue'' and ''The Life of Guzman de Alfarache''. Apocryphal sequels and imitations were also soon produced, being that of ...
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Miguel De Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra ( ; ; 29 September 1547 (assumed) – 22 April 1616 Old Style and New Style dates, NS) was a Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the world's pre-eminent novelists. He is best known for his novel ''Don Quixote'', a work considered as the first modern novel. The novel has been labelled by many well-known authors as the "best book of all time" and the "best and most central work in world literature". Much of his life was spent in relative poverty and obscurity, which led to many of his early works being lost. Despite this, his influence and literary contribution are reflected by the fact that Spanish is often referred to as "the language of Cervantes". In 1569, Cervantes was forced to leave Spain and move to Rome, where he worked in the household of a Cardinal (Catholic Church), cardinal. In 1570, he enlisted in a Spanish Marine Infantry, Spanish Navy infantry regiment, and was badly wounded at th ...
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The Golden Ass
The ''Metamorphoses'' of Apuleius, which Augustine of Hippo referred to as ''The Golden Ass'' (Latin: ''Asinus aureus''), is the only ancient Roman novel in Latin to survive in its entirety. The protagonist of the novel is Lucius. At the end of the novel, he is revealed to be from Madauros, Madaurus, the hometown of Apuleius himself. The plot revolves around the protagonist's curiosity (''curiositas'') and insatiable desire to see and practice magic. While trying to perform a spell to transform into a bird, he is accidentally transformed into an donkey, ass. This leads to a long journey, literal and metaphorical, filled with The Golden Ass#Inset stories, inset tales. He finally finds salvation through the intervention of the goddess Isis, whose cult he joins. Origin The date of composition of the ''Metamorphoses'' is uncertain. It has variously been considered by scholars as a youthful work preceding Apuleius' ''Apology'' of 158–159, or as the climax of his literary career, an ...
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Criminality
In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Cane and Conoghan (editors), '' The New Oxford Companion to Law'', Oxford University Press, 2008 (), p. 263Google Books). though statutory definitions have been provided for certain purposes. The most popular view is that crime is a category created by law; in other words, something is a crime if declared as such by the relevant and applicable law. One proposed definition is that a crime or offence (or criminal offence) is an act harmful not only to some individual but also to a community, society, or the state ("a public wrong"). Such acts are forbidden and punishable by law. The notion that acts such as murder, rape, and theft are to be prohibited exists worldwide. What precisely is a criminal offence is defined by the criminal law of each r ...
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Satire
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of exposing or shaming the perceived flaws of individuals, corporations, government, or society itself into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society. Satire may also poke fun at popular themes in art and film. A prominent feature of satire is strong irony or sarcasm—"in satire, irony is militant", according to literary critic Northrop Frye— but parody, burlesque, exaggeration, juxtaposition, comparison, analogy, and double entendre are all frequently used in satirical speech and writing. This "militant" irony or sarcasm often professes to approve of (or at least accept as natural) th ...
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Literary Realism
Literary realism is a movement and genre of literature that attempts to represent mundane and ordinary subject-matter in a faithful and straightforward way, avoiding grandiose or exotic subject-matter, exaggerated portrayals, and speculative elements such as supernatural events and alternative worlds. It encompasses both fiction (''realistic fiction'') and nonfiction writing. Literary realism is a subset of the broader realist art movement that began with mid- nineteenth-century French literature ( Stendhal) and Russian literature (Alexander Pushkin). It attempts to represent familiar things, including everyday activities and experiences, as they truly are. Background Broadly defined as "the representation of reality", realism in the arts is the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions, as well as implausible, exotic and supernatural elements. Realism has been prevalent in the arts at many periods, and is in large ...
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Character Arc
A character arc is the transformation or inner journey of a character over the course of a story. If a story has a character arc, the character begins as one sort of person and gradually transforms into a different sort of person in response to changing developments in the story. Since the change is often substantive and leading from one personality trait to a diametrically opposite trait (for example, from greed to benevolence), the geometric term '' arc'' is often used to describe the sweeping change. In most stories, lead characters and protagonist A protagonist () is the main character of a story. The protagonist makes key decisions that affect the plot, primarily influencing the story and propelling it forward, and is often the character who faces the most significant obstacles. If a ...s are the characters most likely to experience character arcs, although lesser characters often change as well. A driving element of the plots of many stories is that the main charact ...
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Plot (narrative)
In a literary work, film, or other narrative, the plot is the mapping of events in which each one (except the final) affects at least one other through the principle of Causality, cause-and-effect. The causal events of a plot can be thought of as a selective collection of events from a narrative, all linked by the connector "and so". Simple plots, such as in a traditional ballad, can be linearly sequenced, but plots can form complex interwoven structures, with each part sometimes referred to as a subplot. Plot is similar in meaning to the term ''storyline''. In the narrative sense, the term highlights important points which have consequences within the story, according to American science fiction writer Ansen Dibell. The Premise (narrative), premise sets up the plot, the Character (arts), characters take part in events, while the Setting (narrative), setting is not only part of, but also influences, the final story. An can convolute the plot based on a misunderstanding. The term ...
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First-person Narrative
A first-person narrative (also known as a first-person perspective, voice, point of view, etc.) is a mode of storytelling in which a storyteller recounts events from that storyteller's own personal point of view, using first-person grammar such as "I", "me", "my", and "myself" (also, in plural form, "we", "us", etc.). It must be narrated by a first-person character, such as a protagonist (or other focal character), re-teller, witness, or peripheral character. Alternatively, in a visual storytelling medium (such as video, television, or film), the first-person perspective is a graphical perspective rendered through a character's visual field, so the camera is "seeing" out of a character's eyes. A classic example of a first-person protagonist narrator is Charlotte Brontë's '' Jane Eyre'' (1847), in which the title character is telling the story in which she herself is also the protagonist: "I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me" ...
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Terence
Publius Terentius Afer (; – ), better known in English as Terence (), was a playwright during the Roman Republic. He was the author of six Roman comedy, comedies based on Greek comedy, Greek originals by Menander or Apollodorus of Carystus. All six of Terence's plays survive complete and were originally produced between 166–160 BC. According to ancient authors, Terence was born in Carthage and was brought to Rome as a slave, where he gained an education and his freedom; around the age of 25, Terence is said to have made a voyage to the east in search of inspiration for his plays, where he died either of disease in Greece, or by shipwreck on the return voyage. However, Terence's traditional biography is often thought to consist of speculation by ancient scholars who lived too long after Terence to have access to reliable facts about his life. Terence's plays quickly became standard school texts. He ultimately secured a place as one of the four authors taught to all grammar p ...
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Plautus
Titus Maccius Plautus ( ; 254 – 184 BC) was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest Latin literary works to have survived in their entirety. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by Livius Andronicus, the innovator of Latin literature. The word Plautine () refers to both Plautus's own works and works similar to or influenced by his. Biography Not much is known about Titus Maccius Plautus's early life. It is believed that he was born in Sarsina, a small town in Emilia Romagna in northern Italy, around 254 BC.''The Concise Oxford Companion to Classical Literature'' (1996) Ed. M.C. Howatson and Ian Chilvers, Oxford University Press, Oxford Reference Online According to Morris Marples, Plautus worked as a stage-carpenter or scene-shifter in his early years. It is from this work, perhaps, that his love of the theater originated. His acting talent was eventually discovered; and he adopted the nomen "Maccius" (from Maccus, a clownis ...
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El Buscón
''El Buscón'' (full title ''Historia de la vida del Buscón, llamado Don Pablos, ejemplo de vagamundos y espejo de tacaños'' (literally: History of the life of the Swindler, called Don Pablos, model for hobos and mirror of misers); translated as ''Paul the Sharper or The Scavenger'' and ''The Swindler'') is a picaresque novel by Francisco de Quevedo. It was written around 1604 (the exact date of completion is not known) and published in 1626 by a press in Zaragoza (without Quevedo's permission), though it had circulated in manuscript form previous to that. Purpose of the work The only novel written by Quevedo, it is presented in the first person singular and chronicles the adventures of Don Pablos, a ''buscón'' or swindler. Pablos sets out in life with two aims: to learn virtue and to become a ''caballero'' (gentleman). He fails miserably in both. ''El Buscón'' has been considered a profound satire on Spanish life, but also as a literary exercise for Quevedo, in that he w ...
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