The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes (La Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de Sus Fortunas y Adversidades)

Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) is here offered facing the brilliant Tudor English translation of David Rowland of Anglesey (1586). Ostensibly a racy autobiography of a young rogue and his succession of masters, in reality it is a comical and caustic expose of sixteenth century Spanish society, and especially the Church. Rowland's translation exploited the propaganda potential of the text at a time when England and Spain drifted into open war. Lazarillo de Tormes is a key Renaissance humanist text and a formative influence upon European rogue literature and the evolution of realist prose fiction. Keith Whitlock has written a full introduction from a European perspective and provided a comprehensive annotation of the Tudor English.