Cervantes and the Picaresque: A Question of Compatibility.

In Part 2 of Miguel de Cervantes\u27s Don Quixote (1605), the knight and his squire happen across a prisoner chain gang headed to the royal galleys to serve out their sentences. In a rather famous exchange, Gines de Pasamonte, one of the condemned, informs Don Quixote that he is writing his own autobiography titled La vida de Gines de Pasamonte (The life of Gines de Pasamonte) that, when finished, will be so good and entertaining that it will overshadow Lazarillo de Tormes and all other works of that sort: Es tan bueno {...} que mal ano para Lazarillo de Tormes y para todos cuantos de aquel genero se han escrito o escribieren\u27 (It\u27s so good [...] that it\u27s going to be bad new sfor Lazarillo de Tormes and for all the others of that genre that have been, or will be, written)