Epicurean vs. stoic debate and Lazarillo's character ('Lazarillo de Tormes')

Authors
Citation
C. Colahan, Epicurean vs. stoic debate and Lazarillo's character ('Lazarillo de Tormes'), NEOPHILOLOG, 85(4), 2001, pp. 555-564
Citations number
28
Language
INGLESE
art.tipo
Article
Categorie Soggetti
Language & Linguistics
Journal title
NEOPHILOLOGUS
ISSN journal
0028-2677 → ACNP
Volume
85
Issue
4
Year of publication
2001
Pages
555 - 564
Database
ISI
SICI code
0028-2677(200110)85:4<555:EVSDAL>2.0.ZU;2-L
Abstract
Fictional debates between Epicures and Stoics existed in classical antiquit y and live on in the neo-Latin literature of the Renaissance, as in Lorenzo Valla's De Voluptate and Erasmus's Epicureus. Specific parallels suggest t hat the creator of the picaresque genre knew this tradition. Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century humanists connected Epicureanism with the cult of Bacchu s and the Lazarillo contains several parallels to the Bacchean myth. In the first two books of his dialogue Valla creates an unrestrained Epicure that dwells on the foolishness of Stoics, who condemn their natural urges - tho ugh secretly following them - and blame them on Stepmother Nature's blindin g influence. The self-serving narrator of the Lazarillo makes a similar cla im, and in several ways lives out the recommendations of Valla's voluptuary . Similarly, Erasmus remarks on the etymology of the word "Epicurean", whic h suggests a guide who is a boy or son, and so the proto-picaro himself. Af ter profiling the disastrous moral slide of the unrepentant who begins sinn ing in childhood, he praises an unblemished life, spent from youth in ever growing virtuous pleasures. Lazarillo's life and the concluding line of his account may echo that praise in ironic reversal.