Between Tradition and Modernity: Lizardi and the Formation of the Novel in Mexico

Abstract

This article analyzes El Periquillo Sarniento (1816), by José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi, situating it within the process of the formation of the novel in Mexico at a moment of transition between tradition and modernity. The study challenges readings that have evaluated the work according to later parameters of European realism, arguing that its apparent formal irregularity stems from its inaugural character and from the transitional context between the colonial order and independent Mexico. It examines the articulation of the picaresque tradition, Enlightenment pedagogy, social critique, and costumbrista sketches, as well as the presence of “low comedy” and popular language as axes of narrative innovation. In light of Lizardi’s polemics with the Arcadians, the article discusses the role of the work in the formation of a new reading public and an incipient literary market, understood as signs of the emergence of a literary public sphere. It argues that the work inaugurates a hybrid narrative form in which inherited models intersect with new social and cultural sensibilities. Finally, it interprets Lizardi’s stance as foundational to the figure of the modern writer in Latin America.