(a.) Applied to that class of literature in which the principal personage is the Spanish picaro, meaning a rascal, a knave, a rogue, an adventurer.
Example Sentences:
(1) It makes up part of our legendary picaresque national character, and our weak culture of solidarity."
(2) "My writing is more influenced from the European side - the picaresque novel, but also for me there's Melville, and not only Moby Dick, and poetry from Walt Whitman, who've influenced European literature.
(3) Yet it suffers from an inconsistency of tone, an overly picaresque procession of events, and a general wooziness – perhaps imparted by the scorching Puerto Rican locations – that around the 60-minute mark induces an insidious siesta-time sleepiness in the viewer (well, this one, at least).
(4) Now read on Rupert Thompson's The Insult, with its combination of American picaresque and dreamlike alienation, is greatly influenced by Auster.
(5) This is the story of a picaresque journey in France and in Corsica of Jules Cloquet (1790-1883), the French anatomist who described the well-known Cloquet's node and of Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), the famous author of "Madame Bovary" and of many others novels.
(6) This great American picaresque isn’t especially heavy on narrative force so it remains to be seen how playwright Jeffrey Hatcher and director David Esbjornson will propel the Big Easy action along.
(7) The others on the shortlist were Carol Birch for her much-admired Jamrach's Menagerie , a historical high seas adventure; two Canadian writers - Patrick deWitt for The Sisters Brothers , a picaresque western, and Esi Edugyan for Half Blood Blues , which mixes the raw beauty of jazz and the terror of Nazism; and two debut novels – Stephen Kelman for Pigeon English , which tells the story of a Ghanaian boy who turns detective on a south London housing estate; and AD Miller for Snowdrops , a Moscow-set tale of corruption and moral decline.
(8) But when all the daring connections and imaginative leaps coincide, such as in the Dragons' Trilogy, a picaresque exploration of Chinese culture, or in the seismic plotlines of Tectonic Plates, and Seven Streams, when it appeared again at the National in 1996 (after four years of public performances had refined it to perfection) the effect is spellbinding.
(9) Huck Finn itself is travel writing, in which the raft-trip down the Mississippi provides the picaresque structure for an episodic tale, an Edenic journey away from civilisation, as well as an occasionally frightening glimpse of the (all-too-human) wilderness.
(10) Sympathetic readers have actually regarded Holden as a saint, albeit of an unconventional kind, and have seen the plot as an exercise in the spiritual picaresque.
(11) This has been his special skill in the second half of a picaresque 23-job managerial career after an early ascent built on sturdy, workmanlike success.
(12) Some are gossipy and gonzo, like Bob Carr’s magnificently picaresque romp through the foreign affairs portfolio published earlier this year.
(13) Kim is at once spy story, coming-of-age tale, picaresque novel, adventure and a slice of Indian society at the end of the 19th century.
(14) Two more fat tomes followed: The Scar , a picaresque maritime adventure in which the city at the heart of the book is a floating community of ships lashed together by pirates; and Iron Council , a politically charged western in which a train hijacked by revolutionaries strikes out into the unknown.
(15) After Karadžić arrived in Serbia, the picaresque tale became even more bizarre.
(16) Critical verdict Auster's career has ranged from family memoir (The Invention of Solitude) to speculative dystopia (In The Country of Last Things), picaresque magical realism (Mr Vertigo), investigations of identity (The New York Trilogy established him as the only author one could compare to Samuel Beckett) and animal fable (Timbuktu).
(17) Now read on John Irving's picaresque epics (A Prayer for Owen Meany, The World According to Garp) are lighter than Grass's work, but share a similar tone (Irving studied under Grass in Vienna).
(18) The Secret History of Costaguana (2007), published this month by Bloomsbury in McLean's translation, is a humorous, picaresque novel of adventure and a knowing take on a family saga.
(19) The picaresques by which he drew self-deprecating parallels between himself and these figures were beautifully constructed.
(20) A sort of weird, sprawling picaresque epic, which starts out relatively small and gets larger.
Roguish
Definition:
(a.) Vagrant.
(a.) Resembling, or characteristic of, a rogue; knavish.
(a.) Pleasantly mischievous; waggish; arch.
Example Sentences:
(1) In a break from filming, Pratt described his character as a "roguish space dude who's socially stunted and essentially still very much a child".
(2) When I was 18, I was held in custody in Panama's airport (because of the Indian passport I then carried) and denied formal entry to the nation, while the roguish English friend from high school with whom I was travelling was free to enter with impunity and savour all the dubious pleasures of the Canal Zone.
(3) So Camilla decided to marry the roguish Andrew while Charles had to make do with Diana.
(4) Miami Vice (2006) Foxx reunited with Mann for a lush big-screen treatment of the 80s TV show about two roguish cops patrolling the art-deco seafront.
(5) A roguish and debonair art dealer, our hero has been described as an amoral Bertie Wooster with psychopathic tendencies.
(6) The novelist Howard Jacobson, who roguishly calls himself "the Jewish Jane Austen", certainly found it a struggle teaching Mansfield Park in 1960s Australia, worrying that decorum was just too hard a sell.
(7) This man-of-the-people routine is probably the aspect of McShane most prized by audiences, and it can't be a coincidence that his two signature roles have been flipsides of the same roguish persona, one charming ( Lovejoy ), the other infinitely scuzzy (Al in Deadwood).