Trickster Or Hero A Cross Cultural Analysis Of The Picaro

" Trickster or Hero: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of the Picaro" is a book that explores the theme of the picaro, an anti-heroic figure that is the protagonist of picaresque novels. The picaro is typically a rogue, a trickster, or a social outcast, and lacks traditional heroic characteristics such as courage, honor, and morality. However, despite this, the picaro emerges as the hero of his novels through his wit, resourcefulness, and ability to survive against all odds. The book delves into the literary and cultural significance of the picaro and its enduring appeal to readers. The book talks about the life and journey of the picaro across cultures. Through a comparative study of the picaros in Indian and western fiction, the author brings out the traits which help him become an endearing and heroic figure through his struggles and perseverance. It offers a unique perspective on the picaresque tradition and its impact on literature and society.

The German Pícaro and Modernity reads the re-emergence of the picaresque narrative in twentieth-century German-language writing as an expression of modernity and its social imaginaries. Malkmus argues that the picaresque, whose origins date back to the Spanish Renaissance and the Baroque Age, re-emerged as a reflection both of Germany's explosive modernizing processes between 1880 and 1930 and of the most barbarous implosion of modern civilization under National Socialism. Another reason for the fertility of this literary form at that particular cultural moment is rooted in the complexities of German-Jewish relations and the history of Jewish assimilation in central Europe. A considerable number of authors who used the picaresque form in the twentieth century are from a Jewish background, and Malkmus demonstrates how the picaresque narrative template also offers a medium for German-Jewish self-reflection. In highlighting these connections, he contributes not only to scholarship in European literature, but also but also to our understanding of major social, economic and political issues at stake in modernity

Based on an in-depth ethnographic study working with some of the world’s most influential Independent Public Artists, this book takes a completely new approach. Placing these illicit aesthetic practices within a broader historical, political, and aesthetic context, it argues that they are in fact both intrinsically ornamental (working within a classic architectonic framework), as well as innately ordered (within a highly ritualized, performative structure). Rather than disharmonic, destructive forms, rather than ones solely working within the dynamics of the market, these insurgent images are seen to reface rather than deface the city, operating within a modality of contemporary civic ritual.

In Picaresque Fiction Today Luigi Gussago delineates the legacy and further development of the picaresque in a selection of novels by contemporary Italian and Anglophone writers along several thematic and stylistic lines.