ABSTRACT
The duality of Lazarillo -character/Lázaro-narrator is firmly entrenched in Lazarillo scholarship and, consequently, in the teaching of the novel. It is a commonplace to speak of Lazarillo as a wolf in sheep’s clothing or a trickster who wills the reader into sympathizing with him and then at the end exposes his debased character and the reader as a fool. The many present tense direct quotes in Lazarillo also focus the reader’s attention on the events narrated and create the effect of immediacy. The author of Lazarillo makes use not only of verbal tense in designing the structure of the text, but of verbal aspect as well. The language of Lazarillo , subject and agent, verb tense, aspect and clause type, engages the reader in the reality of the story as narrated by Lázaro and distances him from the passive adult protagonist/narrator.
