A French Lazarillo: Translation and Popular Literature in Nineteenth-Century France

The first installment of Louis Viardot’s translation of the sixteenth-century Spanish novel El Lazarillo de Tormes appeared in Le Siècle in the summer of 1836, weeks before the publication of Balzac’s Une Vieille Fille inaugurated the age of the serial novel in France. Viardot’s reading of the picaresque novel, inscribed both in his introductory comments as well as in the fabric of the translation itself, reinserts the text within the outlines of a new, socially and politically engaged literature for a broader readership. At the same time, the translation’s incongruities reveal the contradictions inherent to debates over the question sociale. This article situates Viardot’s translation among the changing socio-cultural discourses and practices that both informed and were informed by the emergence of a modern popular press and literature. (BL)