Lazarillo de Tormes

Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) is here offered facing the brilliant Tudor English translation of David Rowland of Anglesey (1586). Ostensibly a racy autobiography of a young rogue and his succession of masters, in reality it is a comical and caustic expose of sixteenth century Spanish society, and especially the Church. Rowland's translation exploited the propaganda potential of the text at a time when England and Spain drifted into open war. Lazarillo de Tormes is a key Renaissance humanist text an