A picaresque novel with a story similar to that of a more serious bildungsroman, it parodies many adventure and romance clichés, the struggles of which are caricatured in a tone that is mordantly matter-of-fact.

Also in 1722, Defoe wrote Moll Flanders, another first-person picaresque novel of the fall and eventual redemption of a lone woman in 17th century England.

Between May 1839 and February 1840, Fraser's published the work sometimes considered Thackeray's first novel, Catherine, originally intended as a satire of the Newgate school of crime fiction but ending up more as a rollicking picaresque tale in its own right.

Seven qualities distinguish the picaresque novel or narrative form.

The expression picaresque novel was coined in 1810.

The character type of Lazarillo, which determines the story and the so-called picaresque novel genre, has been shaped from characterization elements already present in Roman literature.

It is variously considered either the first picaresque novel or at least the antecedent of the genre.

Moreover, argues Rico, the structure of the novel is radically different from previous works of the picaresque genre: Quevedo uses the conventions of the picaresque as a mere vehicle to show off his abilities with conceit and rhetoric, rather than to construct a satirical critique of Spanish Golden Age society.

The classic Chinese novel Journey to the West is considered to have considerable picaresque elements.

Thomas Nashe's novel The Unfortunate Traveller is often cited as one of the earliest examples of an English picaresque novel.

Henry Fielding proved his mastery of the form in Joseph Andrews ( 1742 ), The Life of Jonathan Wild the Great ( 1743 ) and The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling ( 1749 ), but, as Fielding himself wrote, these novels were written in imitation of the manner of Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, not in imitation of the picaresque novel ; Cervantes himself wrote a short picaresque novel, Rinconete y Cortadillo part of his Novelas Ejemplares ( Exemplary Novels ).

Voltaire's French novel Candide ( 1759 ) contains elements of the picaresque.

Charles Dickens, who was influenced by Fielding, wrote his first six novels in the picaresque form, with Martin Chuzzlewit ( 1844 ) being the transitional novel to his later more serious and mature works.

Another novel with elements of the picaresque is the English The Luck of Barry Lyndon ( 1844 ).

Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ( 1884 ) was consciously written as a picaresque novel

Rudyard Kipling's Kim ( 1901 ) combined the influence of the picaresque novel with the modern spy novel.

The Enormous Room is E. E. Cummings ' 1922 autobiographical novel about his imprisonment in France during World War I on unfounded charges of " espionage ", and it includes many picaresque depictions of his adventures as " an American in a French prison ".

Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March ( 1953 ) is a picaresque novel with bildungsroman traits.

In Britain, the body of Tobias Smollett's work, and Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders ( 1722 ) are considered picaresque, but they lack the sense of religious redemption of delinquency that was very important in Spanish and German novels.

In the English-speaking world, the term " picaresque " has referred more to a literary technique or model than to the precise genre that the Spanish call picaresco.

Pedro Berruguete brought his social scenes and critic with many of its works. What at the height of the Spanish Empire was continued including scenes of street life picaresque and at its slow falling eventually produced many works by the painters of The Spanish Golden Age, Velázquez, Murillo and others.

It is in the style of the Spanish picaresque romance, and furnished Théophile Gautier with the idea and with some of the details of his Capitaine Fracasse.

It was published simultaneously in two cities, in 1554 in Alcalá de Henares, Spain ( seven years after Cervantes was born there ), and, in 1555 in Antwerp, Flanders, which was then under Spanish rule, and where the similarly picaresque book Till Eulenspiegel had been published in 1529.

Besides its importance in the Spanish literature of the Golden Age, Lazarillo de Tormes is credited with founding a literary genre, the picaresque novel, from the Spanish word pícaro, meaning " rogue " or " rascal ".

Beside the Spanish picaresque novels and the French burlesque novel, in Italy flourished the poema eroicomico.

Joseph ibn Zabara ( end of 12th-beginning of 13th c. CE ), a resident of Barcelona and Catalan speaker, wrote the Sēfer sha ‘ ashū ‘ īm (‘ The Book of Delights ’), in which the author, the narrator, and the protagonist are all Ibn Zabara himself, and in which the episodes are arranged in linear, not cyclical fashion, in a way that anticipates the structure of Spanish picaresque novels such as the anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes ( 1535 ) and Guzmán de Alfarache ( 1599 ) by Mateo Alemán.

Some documentation for it occurs in picaresque works as early as the Spanish Golden Century, such as in Quevedo's El Buscón.

Besides its importance in the Spanish literature of the Golden Centuries, Lazarillo de Tormes is credited with founding a literary genre, the picaresque novel, so called from Spanish pícaro, meaning " rogue " or " rascal ".

In Bologna he entertained himself by performing various translations, such as Cartas de Jose Antonio Constantini ( Letters from Jose Antonio Constantini ), in eight volumes, which he completed in the Papal States, Arte de encomendarse a Dios by Father Antonio Francesco Bellati, and the famous picaresque novel by Alain René Lesage, Gil Blas de Santillana, in whose prologue he accused the French author of having stolen and translated several Spanish novels of the genre to compose his own.

Other major 18th century English novelists are Samuel Richardson ( 1689-1761 ), author of the epistolary novels Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded ( 1740 ) and Clarissa ( 1747-8 ); Henry Fielding ( 1707 – 54 ), who wrote Joseph Andrews ( 1742 ) and The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling ( 1749 ); Laurence Sterne ( 1713 – 68 ) who published Tristram Shandy in parts between 1759 and 1767 ; Oliver Goldsmith (? 1730-74 ) author of The Vicar of Wakefield ( 1766 ); Tobias Smollett ( 1721 – 71 ) a Scottish novelist best known for his comic picaresque novels, such as The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle ( 1751 ) and The Expedition of Humphry Clinker ( 1771 ), who influenced Charles Dickens ; and Fanny Burney ( 1752-1840 ), whose novels " were enjoyed and admired by Jane Austen ," wrote Evelina ( 1778 ), Cecilia ( 1782 ) and Camilla ( 1796 ).

The result is a slimmed-down, artistically unified, more ironic, and darker picaresque ( Nancy Vogeley, " A Latin American Enlightenment Version of the Picaresque: Lizardi's Don Catrín de la Fachenda ," in Carmen Benito-Vessels and Michael Zappala, eds., The Picaresque, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1994, pp. 123 – 46 ).

It is thought the two volumes also differ greatly in tone: Volume 1 follows the format of " a satire and a picaresque ," whereas Volume 2 is dominated by " earnestness " and abolitionist sentiment.

The play is in many respects identical to the first chapter of " The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes ," a picaresque novel published anonymously in Spain in 1554.

Another important source appears to have been Apuleius's The Golden Ass, one of the earliest known novels, a picaresque from late classical antiquity.

Apart from being some sort of travelogue, Cunt is of course a picaresque novel.

At the same time, as critics have noted, Lizardi's interest in depicting the realities and reproducing the speech of Mexicans from all social classes make his novel a bridge between the inherited picaresque mold that forms its overt structure and the costumbrista novels of the nineteenth century.

The most likely genesis for the mock-heroic, as distinct from the picaresque, burlesque, and satirical poem is the comic poem Hudibras ( 1662 – 1674 ), by Samuel Butler.

One of the most important characteristics in the book is the didactic-satiric line ( as well as other books of the picaresque novel, as Lazarillo de Tormes conceived as a strong critic done by the humanists ), because it unveils the moral decadence of Rome, and all the characters displayed — from the bishops to the villains — appear surrounded by a world of corruption, prostitution and violence.

Leiber's Lankhmar bears considerable similarity to 16th Century Seville as depicted in Cervantes ' classical picaresque tale " Rinconete y Cortadillo ": a bustling, cosmopolitan maritime city, into whose port galleons sail laden with gold from which only a few benefit, with a thoroughly corrupt civil government and a powerful and well-organized Thieves ' Guild — all seen through the eyes of two young adventurers who formed a partnership to guard each other's back in this dangerous milieu.

It tells the picaresque story of a poor African American man on his flight from the white authority.

That he excelled in picaresque malice is proved by his indecorous verses written in the old Castilian metres and in the more elaborate measures imported from Italy.

Influenced by the international success of the picaresque novel from Spain ( such as Lazarillo de Tormes ), and by Miguel de Cervantes ' short-story collection Exemplary Tales ( which appeared in French beginning in 1614 ) and Don Quixote de la Mancha ( French translation 1614 – 1618 ), the French novelists of the first half of the century also chose to describe and satirize their own era and its excesses.