Characteristics of the Picaresque genre:
Extract from Picaresque Narrative, Picaresque Fictions: A Theory and Research Guide by Ulrich Wicks (1989)
If you are fashioning a novel upon the tradition of picaresque fiction and spicing it with a romantic turn of events, you can cause a surgeon's second mate to jump overboard and be rescued by a former schoolfellow... You can land your hero in France and have him at once come upon one of the two men there that is important for him to encounter--in this case his uncle and former benefactor. When it is time for another change of scene, and you wish to return to England, you can rub the lamp and have a genie appear in the form of Strap, a stupid fellow but wonderfully supplied with money and devotion to bestow upon his undeserving idol... You can if you wish bring your novel to a happy conclusion by conjuring up from the fabulous land of South America a father rich enough to make all reasonable dreams come true and thus enable your hero, no longer a childless orphan, to shine before his friends and triumph over his enemy. (McCullough, 1946)
1) Episodic
-Journey: highly illogical, least believable
2) Picarro (main character)
-Appears in all episodes
-story is narrated from his perspective (usually 1st person)
3) Picturesque
-gives a good opportunity to make use of visuals
Why the need to update the text into a modern medium??
1) To keep in tune with the modern generation
-Context is unfamiliar
-Jokes tend to be dated
-Nature of the modern kids: no longer have the culture of reading
2) Length of the text (400-500 pages in length)
3) Opportunity for a multi-modal text type (eg. visuals, sounds)
4) Modern technology allows for more "interaction" with the text
The solution?
Something that many people, esp teens are doing:
They BLOG!
Advantages of having the picaresque on the blog:
1) The uniqueness of the picaresque over other types of fiction/genre
- 'slapstick' nature of jokes can be translated over (eg. pictures/videos)
2) Use of visuals
3) You can continually add on to the story!
