ABSTRACT
The West European translations of the Spanish pica-reque novel in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries are at first fairly literal versions, later changing to freer translations and adaptations in which aesthetic, ideological and religious factors play an important part. As the point of departure for such a comparison to use a kind of blueprint of the Spanish picaresque novel, as outlined in the recent study of the genre. The catalogue of translations of the picaresque novels just mentioned reveals a high proportion of French versions. Spain's neighbour France was in a state of political and religious turmoil. The ending of the French Buscon can be found in most of the translations of Quevedo's novel in France as well as in the Netherlands, Germany and England. The changes in the narrative structure and especially in the concluding passages of L'Aventurier Buscon contributed in their turn to the rise of a literary genre that was at least partly new.
