UNINTERlingua 2023

The same type of situation can be found in Cervantes’s El coloquio de los perros, a novel that, although it contains fantas- tic elements, the critic Gonzalo Sobejano characterizes as picaresque. Here we do not find a tuna fish but a dog that can narrate his adventures with his masters. The critic defends this canine character as a pícaro by saying that since the dog fulfills many of the requisites of the pica- resque, the novel must be considered as such. Sobejano points out that the dog, Berganza, speaks in first person, serves nine masters, experiences varied fortunes, tells his story from when he was a pup un- til he is completely grown up, describes a certain level of sleaziness surrounding his parents’s lives, and takes and leaves mas- ters. Sobejano concludes that, although a novel presents certain fantastic elements, this is no reason to eliminate it from the field of the picaresque. With everything already mentioned abo- ve, we can confidently assert that the Segunda parte is truly a picaresque novel given the way Lázaro acts. The fantastic elements, far from being something nega- tive within the work, make the novel more interesting and entertaining. The same way that there is room for El coloquio de los perros to be considered a picaresque novel where the picaresque and the fan- tastic can co-exist, there should also be room for the Segunda parte de Lazarillo de tormes y de sus fortunas y adversidades to be a part of this genre. Having presented the reasons why the Segunda parte must be considered a pi- caresque work, we can now focus on the descent of our pícaro to the bottom of the sea. If we compare Lázaro’s story to other tales involving a descent to a lower world, we will see how Lázaro’s descent is quite 59