From: Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America
2.2 (1982): 109-31. Copyright © 1999, The Cervantes Society of
America   Cervantes De/Re-Constructs the Picaresque   IT HAS
BECOME a commonplace of literary history to contrast Cervantes
with the picaresque novels of his epoch, and to recognize in the
allusions to and reflections of them in his works expressions of
hostility. Since Américo Castro opposed the esthetic values of
Cervantes to those of Alemán (in El pensamiento de Cervantes,
1925), much has been written to sharpen the contrast and to
present it in terms which are not limited to literary devices,
techniques, and characters, but bring out underlying differences
of attitudes and human values. Many writers (myself included)
have written of Rinconete y Cortadillo, the Coloquio de los
perros, and the conversation between Don Quixote and Ginés de
Pasamonte (DQ I, 22) as so many exercises in parody, or as
criticism by doing what authors of picaresque might have done
but failed to do. This essa