Gil Blas ( ) is a picaresque novel by Alain-René Lesage published between 1715 and 1735. It was highly popular, and was translated several times into English, most notably as The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane, by Tobias Smollett in 1748.
Plot summary
Gil Blas is born in misery to a stablehand and a chambermaid of Santillana in Cantabria, and is educated by his uncle. He leaves Oviedo at the age of seventeen to attend the University of Salamanca. His bright future is suddenly interrupted when he is forced to help robbers along the route and is faced with jail.
He becomes a valet and, over the course of several years, is able to observe many different classes of society, both lay and clerical. Because of his occupation, he meets many disreputable people and is able to adjust to many situations, thanks to his adaptability and quick wit.
He finally finds himself at the royal court as a favorite of the king and secretary to the prime minister. Working his way up through hard work and intelligence, Gil is able to retire to a castle to enjoy a fortune and a hard-earned honest life.
Literary significance and reception
Gil Blas is related to Lesage's play Turcaret (1709). In both works, Lesage uses witty valets in the service of thieving masters, women of questionable morals, cuckolded yet happy husbands, gourmands, ridiculous poets, false savants, and dangerously ignorant doctors to make his point. Each class and each occupation becomes an archetype.
This work is both universal and French within a Spanish context. However, its originality was questioned. Voltaire was among the first to point out similarities between Gil Blas and Marcos de Obregón by Vicente Espinel, from which Lesage had borrowed several details. Considering Gil Blas to be essentially Spanish, José Francisco de Isla claimed to translate the work from French into Spanish in order to return it to its natural state. Juan Antonio Llorente suggested that Gil Blas was written by the historian Antonio de Solís y Ribadeneyra by arguing that no contemporary writer could have possibly written a work of such detail and accuracy.
References and allusions in other works
Jean-Jacques Rousseau mentions reading Gil Blas in his Confessions (Book IV, 1731-1732), saying it came highly recommended by Mademoiselle du Chatelet who "had a taste for that kind of moral observation which leads to the knowledge of mankind". Rousseau commented that "I read this performance with pleasure, but my judgment was not yet ripe enough to relish that sort of reading".
Gil Blas is mentioned in Jean-Paul Sartre's novel Nausea. The central character is showing the Autodidact some photos. One of them is of Santillana. The Autodidact responds by asking "the Santillana of Gil Blas?"
Gil Blas is referred to by Jonathan Swift in his satirical Directions to Servants, dated 1731, with recommendations for the servants of rich masters to take the most advantage and have the least trouble in their daily tasks. In the chapter aimed at the "House Steward and Land Steward", Swift specifically instructs the reader to look up what Gil Blas has to say on the matter, as a more qualified source thus acknowledged.
The 1751 play Gil Blas by the British writer Edward Moore was performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane with David Garrick in the title role.
Vasily Narezhny imitated Lesage in his 1814 novel A Russian Gil Blas ().
Friedrich Korn's novel Der Jüdische Gil Blas (The Jewish Gil Blas) was published in 1834.
Gil Blas is alluded to in Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's Venus in Furs. The character Wanda von Dunajew ascribes the cause of her own free thinking to an early introduction to classical works; these include Gil Blas, which she read at the age of ten.
Gil Blas is referred to in Honoré de Balzac's Facino Cane. The protagonist promises to spare the narrator "tales of adventures worthy of Gil Blas".
In Oliver Wendell Holmes's The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1857), the Autocrat begins Section IX with the famous quote from Lesage's Preface: "Aqui esta encerrada el alma del licenciado Pedro Garcia": "Here is enclosed the soul of the lawyer Pedro Garcia". This signals that his own readers, like the two bachelors of Salamanca who discover Garcia's gravestone, will need to "fix on the moral concealed" beneath the surface of his recollections if they are to receive any benefit from them.