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#TheMangyParrot

The Mangy Parrot: The Life and Times of Periquillo Sarniento Written by himself for his Children () by Mexican author José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi, is generally considered the first novel written and published in Latin America. El Periquillo Read More..

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Description	The Mangy Parrot: The Life and Times of Periquillo Sarniento Written by himself for his Children () by Mexican author José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi, is generally considered the first novel written and published in Latin America. El Periquillo was written in 1816, though due to government censorship the last of four volumes were not published until 1831. The novel has been continuously in print in more than twenty editions since then.El Periquillo Sarniento can be read as a nation-building novel, written at a critical moment in the transition of Mexico (and Latin America) from Colony to Independence. Jean Franco has characterized the novel as "a ferocious indictment of Spanish administration in Mexico: ignorance, superstition and corruption are seen to be its most notable characteristics".[Jean Franco, An Introduction to Spanish-American Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 34; cited in Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised edition (London: Verso, 1991), p. 29]Given Lizardi's career as a pioneering Mexican journalist, his novel can also be read as a journal of opinion in the guise of a picaresque novel. It follows the adventures of Pedro Sarmiento (nicknamed "Periquillo Sarniento" or "Mangy Parrot" by his disreputable friends), who, like Lizardi himself, is the son of a Criollo family from Mexico City with more pretensions to "good birth" than means of support. The story begins with Periquillo’s birth and miseducation and continues through his endless attempts to make an unearned living, as a student, a friar, a gambler, a notary, a barber, a pharmacist, a doctor, a beggar, a soldier, a count, and a thief, until late in life he sees the light and begins to lead an honest life.At every point along the way, Lizardi uses the deathbed voice of the elderly and repentant Periquillo to lambast the social conditions that led to his wasted life. In this, the novelist mimics the role of the early nineteenth-century journalist more interested in arguing opinions than relating mundane incidents. The marriage of slapstick humor with moralizing social commentary, established in El Periquillo, remained a constant in the Mexican novels that followed on its heels throughout the nineteenth century.(Antonio Benitez-Rojo, "José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi and the Emergence of the Spanish American Novel as National Project," Modern Language Quarterly 57 (2): pp. 334–35) Agustín Yáñez justifies this often criticized "moralizing" tendency in Lizardi as "a constant in the artistic production of Mexico... and moreover, it is a constant in Mexican life".("El Pensador Mexicano," in Cedomil Goic, ed., Historia y crítica de la literatura hispanoamericana, t. I, Época colonial, Barcelona: Grijalbo, 1988, pp. 428–29)At the same time, as critics have noted, Lizardi's interest in depicting the realities and reproducing the speech of Mexicans from all social classes make his novel a bridge between the inherited picaresque mold that forms its overt structure and the costumbrista novels of the nineteenth century.
Description	The Mangy Parrot: The Life and Times of Periquillo Sarniento Written by himself for his Children () by Mexican author José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi, is generally considered the first novel written and published in Latin America. El Periquillo was written in 1816, though due to government censorship the last of four volumes were not published until 1831. The novel has been continuously in print in more than twenty editions since then.El Periquillo Sarniento can be read as a nation-building novel, written at a critical moment in the transition of Mexico (and Latin America) from Colony to Independence. Jean Franco has characterized the novel as "a ferocious indictment of Spanish administration in Mexico: ignorance, superstition and corruption are seen to be its most notable characteristics".[Jean Franco, An Introduction to Spanish-American Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 34; cited in Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised edition (London: Verso, 1991), p. 29]Given Lizardi's career as a pioneering Mexican journalist, his novel can also be read as a journal of opinion in the guise of a picaresque novel. It follows the adventures of Pedro Sarmiento (nicknamed "Periquillo Sarniento" or "Mangy Parrot" by his disreputable friends), who, like Lizardi himself, is the son of a Criollo family from Mexico City with more pretensions to "good birth" than means of support. The story begins with Periquillo’s birth and miseducation and continues through his endless attempts to make an unearned living, as a student, a friar, a gambler, a notary, a barber, a pharmacist, a doctor, a beggar, a soldier, a count, and a thief, until late in life he sees the light and begins to lead an honest life.At every point along the way, Lizardi uses the deathbed voice of the elderly and repentant Periquillo to lambast the social conditions that led to his wasted life. In this, the novelist mimics the role of the early nineteenth-century journalist more interested in arguing opinions than relating mundane incidents. The marriage of slapstick humor with moralizing social commentary, established in El Periquillo, remained a constant in the Mexican novels that followed on its heels throughout the nineteenth century.(Antonio Benitez-Rojo, "José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi and the Emergence of the Spanish American Novel as National Project," Modern Language Quarterly 57 (2): pp. 334–35) Agustín Yáñez justifies this often criticized "moralizing" tendency in Lizardi as "a constant in the artistic production of Mexico... and moreover, it is a constant in Mexican life".("El Pensador Mexicano," in Cedomil Goic, ed., Historia y crítica de la literatura hispanoamericana, t. I, Época colonial, Barcelona: Grijalbo, 1988, pp. 428–29)At the same time, as critics have noted, Lizardi's interest in depicting the realities and reproducing the speech of Mexicans from all social classes make his novel a bridge between the inherited picaresque mold that forms its overt structure and the costumbrista novels of the nineteenth century.

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Name	The Mangy Parrot
Name
Authors	José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi
Authors
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Translator
Genre	Novel
Genre
Series
Series
Number in series
Number in series
Language	Spanish
Language
Country	Mexico
Country