The last sentence of Lazarillo de Tormes
A C1 Spanish critical essay on the anonymous 1554 novel: the book is a letter written in self defence, and its triumphant closing line is the trap it sets for the reader.
La última frase del Lazarillo de Tormes
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A critical reading of the anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes, printed in 1554. The essay sets out the facts first: the unknown author, the Inquisition ban and the later censored version, the prologue and seven chapters of very uneven length, and the letter addressed to a Vuestra Merced who has asked Lázaro to explain the caso. It then argues that the memoir is a legal plea rather than a recollection, follows Lázaro through the blind man, the priest and the starving squire, and reads the closing claim to be at the summit of all good fortune as irony the narrator writes without noticing. Fifteen cards cover the critical register and the period vocabulary, and three questions close the piece.
El texto se presenta como una carta. Un prólogo y siete tratados de extensión muy desigual componen la respuesta de Lázaro a un destinatario al que solo llama Vuestra Merced y que le ha pedido que le explique «el caso». Esa palabra vaga gobierna la novela entera: la crítica suele entender que el caso es el rumor que corre por Toledo sobre la mujer de Lázaro y el arcipreste al que ella sirve.
De ahí que la autobiografía no sea un ejercicio de memoria, sino una defensa. Lázaro no recuerda: alega. Cuenta que sirve a un ciego que le golpea la cabeza contra el toro de piedra del puente de Salamanca, a un clérigo que guarda el pan bajo llave y a un escudero venido de Castilla la Vieja que, ya en Toledo, no tiene qué comer y al que, en una inversión magnífica, termina alimentando el propio criado. Los tres amos enseñan lo mismo por vías distintas: el hambre educa más deprisa que la doctrina.
Y entonces llega el final. Lázaro, ya pregonero de Toledo, se declara «en la cumbre de toda buena fortuna». ¿Quién juzga aquí a quién? El narrador cierra su carta convencido de haber ganado; el lector, que ha visto de qué está hecha esa cumbre, no puede leer la frase sin ironía. Podría objetarse que la ironía la ponemos nosotros y no el texto. A mi juicio, la insistencia del propio Lázaro en su prosperidad, justo cuando menos motivos tiene para presumir, la deja escrita en la página.
Nada de esto se anuncia. El libro no comenta a su narrador ni lo corrige, y en ese silencio está su modernidad: da la voz a un criado, algo poco frecuente en la prosa de su tiempo, y deja que se retrate solo. Suele considerarse el punto de partida de la novela picaresca.
¿Ha leído usted alguna novela cuyo narrador le inspirara menos confianza cuanto más hablaba? ¿Cambiaría su lectura del Lazarillo si supiéramos quién es Vuestra Merced? ¿Recuerda una frase final que diga lo contrario de lo que parece decir?
About this article
What you'll learn
The register of literary criticism: the present tense for what happens inside a work against the past for publishing history, attributing a reading with la crítica suele, raising an objection with podría objetarse, the rhetorical question as an argument, de ahí que with the subjunctive, and the accented qué in no tiene qué comer.
A critical reading of the anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes, printed in 1554. The essay sets out the facts first: the unknown author, the Inquisition ban and the later censored version, the prologue and seven chapters of very uneven length, and the letter addressed to a Vuestra Merced who has asked Lázaro to explain the caso. It then argues that the memoir is a legal plea rather than a recollection, follows Lázaro through the blind man, the priest and the starving squire, and reads the closing claim to be at the summit of all good fortune as irony the narrator writes without noticing. Fifteen cards cover the critical register and the period vocabulary, and three questions close the piece.
After reading
Article learning block
Phrases, words, grammar, and quick practice from this text.
Phrases for training
Add useful phrases to SRS or mark them as already known.
Conviene recordar que
newit is worth remembering that
An impersonal opener that presents a fact as necessary background without saying who thinks so. Conviene plus an infinitive works the same way: conviene distinguir, conviene señalar.
Lets you introduce evidence in an essay without writing I think.
A mi juicio
newin my view
A formal way to claim an opinion as your own, at the register of a mi entender or a mi modo de ver. Juicio here means judgement, not a trial.
Marks clearly where the evidence stops and your reading begins.
bajo llave
newunder lock and key
A fixed phrase with no article: guardar algo bajo llave. Saying bajo la llave breaks it.
Comes up when something is kept under lock so that someone else cannot reach it.
Vuestra Merced
newYour Worship, your Grace
The respectful address of the sixteenth century, used with third person verb forms. Worn down in speech over generations, it is the origin of today's usted.
Explains where usted and its third person agreement come from.
Key words
Vocabulary that carries the school-day topic.
el escudero
escudero
nobleman; attendant to a lord
Originally the man who carried a knight's shield, escudo. By the sixteenth century it named a nobleman by blood and also the retainer who attended a lord or a lady. Poverty is not part of the definition, yet the word already carried a faintly contemptuous ring, and penniless escuderos were common enough in Castile: that gap between rank and means is the joke of the third chapter.
Key to reading Golden Age literature, where rank and money rarely match.
el pregonero
pregonero
town crier
The man who announced official news and auctions in the street, from pregonar, to cry out publicly. It was a paid post but a despised one, which is why Lázaro's pride in it reads as it does.
The verb pregonar still means to broadcast something you should have kept quiet.
el arcipreste
arcipreste
archpriest
A priest with authority over the other priests of a district. The rank matters here: the rumour touches a man of the church, one of the traits that troubled the censors.
Recurs in central works of medieval and Golden Age literature, from the Arcipreste de Hita onwards.
alegar
alega
to plead, to put forward as a defence
Alegar is to offer something as an argument in your own favour, often before a court. Placed against recordar, it turns the whole memoir into a legal plea.
A precise verb for reporting what someone claims without endorsing it.
el amo
amos
master, the one served
El amo is whoever a servant or an animal answers to. The feminine ama survives in ama de casa, the woman who runs her own household, and in ama de llaves, the head servant who runs the rest of the staff.
The word the picaresque is built on: the pícaro is defined by his masters.
Grammar in context
Patterns from the text worth noticing after reading.
the present tense for what a book does
Cuenta que sirve a un ciego
he tells how he serves a blind man
Criticism narrates the events of a work in the present, because a text does the same thing every time it is read. History takes the past instead: the book was printed in 1554, but Lázaro serves the blind man.
Using the past here makes a review read as a plot summary rather than analysis.
attributing a reading to others
la crítica suele entender que
critics generally take it that
Soler plus an infinitive states a habit, and the collective subject la crítica hands the claim to other people. The verb after que stays in the indicative because the reading is reported, not doubted.
Separates what scholars hold from what you are about to argue yourself.
raising the objection yourself
Podría objetarse que
it could be objected that
The conditional podría lowers the force of the claim and the se leaves the objector unnamed, so the writer can state the strongest counter argument before answering it.
The standard move for sounding fair rather than defensive.
a question used as an argument
¿Quién juzga aquí a quién?
who is judging whom here?
A rhetorical question makes the reader draw the conclusion instead of being handed it. Note the personal a before the second quién: juzgar takes it when the object is a person.
One well placed question carries more weight in an essay than three assertions.
de ahí que plus the subjunctive
De ahí que la autobiografía no sea
hence the memoir is not
De ahí que draws a consequence from what was just said and normally takes the subjunctive: de ahí que sea, de ahí que resulte. Also note sino, not pero, after a negative: not this but that.
A compact way to link evidence to conclusion without writing por eso again.
the accent on qué inside a statement
no tiene qué comer
he has nothing to eat
No tener qué comer means to have nothing to eat. The accent is not a mistake: qué is an indirect question buried in the sentence, as in no sé qué decir. Without it, no tiene que comer is the obligation periphrasis tener que and means he does not have to eat.
Explains a whole family of expressions: tener qué hacer, no haber qué decir.
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