El Buscon [Paperback]

Francisco de Quevedo (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 8477480338 | ISBN-13: 978-8477480334 | Publication Date: January 1, 2006

Provided in Spanish only.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: Spanish

About the Author

Author bio is not available at this time. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Catedra (January 1, 2006)
• Language: Spanish
• ISBN-10: 8477480338
• ISBN-13: 978-8477480334
• ASIN: 8437602378
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #595,969 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the catalogue of mysanthropy, July 31, 2001

By 

Bálint Hancz (Hungary) - See all my reviews

This review is from: El Buscón (Alba) (Spanish Edition) (Paperback)

While Góngora represented the costumbrismo, the brighter (but not the lighter), more classical side of Spanish baroque, Quevedo was the biggest representative of the creacionismo. This tendency in theory relied on word-plays and witty games with the form and the meaning but in fact it was not much different from the above-mentioned style. Still, Quevedo is a far cry in content to Góngora's works, as he had a much more pessimistic world-view. The eerie quality of his poems is achieved by combining this playful style with the darkest subjects. But the most macabre work from Quevedo, was El Buscón, which took the clichés of the picaresque novels to the extreme, both in content and in form. The parents of Pablos, the hero, according to tradition were criminals, but here their crimes are mostly hideous and described in gratuitous details. The trials across which Pablos must pass through are also taken to extreme, the descriptions are generously filled with excrement, vomit and every imaginable humours of the human body. To crown all of this, contrasted with the petty crimes the picaros commit, Pablos kills a man for no particular reason, which makes the conversion at the end of the book seem ironic and not very plausible. Like in Goya's dark series of pictures, the author offers a catalogue of the world's ugliness, a pessimistic world view taken to the extreme. What makes the novel even more creepy is Quevedo's ability to mix the grotesque details with everyday details from life, and thus he does not alienate us completely from his work. His novel can be considered the summation of the misanthrope details of his poems, neatly embedded in the traditions of the most popular kind of novel in that age, the picaresque, to assure that it would sell well and his dark ideas can spread all over the country. Creepy.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Picardía, November 27, 2002

By 

Luis R. Albaladejo (Puerto Rico) - See all my reviews

This review is from: El Buscon (Paperback)

Esta es una de mis obras favoritas. En ella Quevedo se muestra como un maestro en el manejo del lenguaje. Utilizando la técnica del conceptismo, la narración está repleta de juegos de palabras que logran un efecto de comicidad a lo largo de toda la obra. Es un texto muy divertido que asombra por la capacidad del autor de crear ambigüedad en el lenguaje, sugerir más de un sentido con una misma palabra y producir efectos hilarantes con el doble sentido del lenguaje. El protagonista, Don Pablos, como todo pícaro, pasa por una serie de experiencias que cuenta con desverguenza. Releo este libro una vez al año y es siempre como si lo leyera por primera vez. Lo recomeindo a todo el que quiera aprender riendo.