A comparison between the Spanish

picaresque novel and the 18th century English

.novel
The picaresque novel emerged as a form of narration in the 16th
century in Spain, particularly with Lazarillo de Tormes in 1554,in
which the poor boy Lazaro describes his services under seven
successive clerical masters, each of whose dubious character is
hidden under a mask of hypocrisy . So the Picaresque novel
generally is an autobiography of a real or fictional adventurer
"Spanish picaro" who moves from place to another using his wits
rather than honor codes in order to survive. The protagonist
describes his experiences to satirize the society which he has
exploited. The Picaresque novel arouse as a reaction against a
literary form which embodied the glories of heroism and codes of
honor. In those romances the individuals were portrayed larger and
better than real men, while the Picaresque novel presented a world
stripped of all illusions, as a senseless and distorted realm. All the
themes and features of the Picaresque novel – its episodic, a casual
plot and its unresolved ending – contribute to the sense of the world
.where nothing is permanent

The first picaresque novel in England was Thomas Nashe's

Unfortunate Traveller(1594). In England the female picaro was
revived in Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders(1722), and many picaresque
elements can be found in Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews(1742). In
the mid of 18th century there was a growth of realistic novel with
more elaborated plot and development of character that led to the
decline of the picaresque novel, which came to be considered
.somehow inferior in artistry

The real rise of the novel in its present sense began in the 18th
century in Britain where there were some efforts in narration and
fiction but not a coherent literary institution yet. The nature of these
efforts were vague having to certain genre to be belonged to. The
boundaries between the everyday world and the fictional realm are
fluid and uncertain. Since the mid-eighteenth century onward, the
18th century witnessed a lot of changes in the intellectual and moral
levels. It was called the Age of Enlightment in which a new rational
way of thinking and a deepened sense of values were the prevailing
.trend

The emergence of the middle class and the low illiteracy rates
helped in the prosperity of literature. A new genre of literature was
 established due to the reasons mentioned above and to the amount
of leisure time people had at that time. Novel in those
circumstances was reborn in a new name and shape. Officially the
term novel had been chosen to refer to this new fictional genre, with
a coherent features distinguishing the new novel from the old
romances. It is characterized with its individualization of its
characters and to the detailed presentation of their environment.
The novel also succeeded in stressing the elements of formal
.realism, authenticity, familiarity, and temporal and cultural context

The Picaresque novel and the English novel have all descended
from the early fictional narration attempts. As all literary genres,
they both carry the noble message of revealing the evils of society,
corruption, and hypocrisies through satire and irony. However there
are some differences concerning the protagonist, setting, plot, and
narration. In the Picaresque novel, the protagonist is an outsider
who feels inwardly unrestrained by the social codes, while in the
English novel the protagonist is a representative of the highly moral
standards and values of that time. While the English novel rejects
the traditional plots giving more freedom to the stereotypes in plot
and characters, we see only one stereotype of character and plot in
the Picaresque novel, that is the picaro who wanders about, barely
escaping punishment for his own lying or stealing. As a result to all
the travelling and wandering of the picaro, the setting will be in
many places unlike the English novel where there is usually specifity
.in setting, both place and time