La picaresca del siglo de oro al cine: Una prueba del modelo modal-estructural de Ulrich Wicks

Abstract

Current usage of the literary label picaresque presents a high degree of plasticity that ranges from one that remains strictly anchored in the historic works of the genre to applications so loose that the term is able to accommodate any fictional text that includes a sequence of episodes threaded around a main character, who is no longer required to be a pícaro. In his essay on the model nature of the picaresque narrative, Ulrich Wicks proposes a hybrid modal-structural model by enunciating a number of attributes pertaining to the “whole picaresque situation”, thus effectively reconciling the historic dimension of the genre and its condition as an open fictional tradition of contemporary reach. This study begins by examining the attributes of the “total picaresque situation” in Lazarillo de Tormes, the genre’s founding novel, if not necessarily its archetype, in order to reaffirm the historic dimension of Wick’s modal characterization. Thereafter, the essay establishes a parallel between Lazarillo and the Argentine filmNine Queens that focuses on the latter and attends to a double goal: on the one hand, it seeks to test the diachronic dimension of Wicks’ modal approximation; on the other hand, it proposes a picaresque reading of Director Fabián Bielinsky’s work.