picaresque

Then there were some of the writers of the picaresque novels.

The artist's picaresque burin had made Robespierre as hideous as possible.

There were in Germany popular tales which were picaresque novels in embryo.

A variety of the picaresque species was the "books of beggars."

He has taken a rascal for the hero of his picaresque and rattling romance.

But the narratives also look backward to an older type, the picaresque.

His square face was confident, his foxy mustache was picaresque.

Here again, of course, the picaresque model comes in, and there is a good deal of directly borrowed matter.

The Spanish picaresque romance was not in itself a very great literary kind; but it had in it a great faculty of emancipation.

Barry Lyndon with its picaresque note and Irish background, would seem an excellent contribution to the "Cranford" series.