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Roderick Random, in full The Adventures of Roderick Random, picaresque novel by Tobias Smollett, published in 1748. Modeled after Alain-René Lesage’s Gil Blas, the novel consists of a series of episodes that give an account of the life and times of the Scottish rogue Roderick Random. At various times rich and then poor, the hero goes to sea, has romantic entanglements, travels the world, discovers his long-lost father, and marries his true love.
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English literature: Smollett…can perhaps be found in
The Adventures of Roderick Random(1748), The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle(1751), and (an altogether more interesting encounter with the dialects of sensibility) The Expedition of Humphry Clinker(1771). The last was his only epistolary novel and perhaps the outstanding use of this form for…
Tobias Smollett…1748 Smollett published his novel
The Adventures of Roderick Random,in part a graphic account of British naval life at the time, and also translated the great picaresque romance Gil Blasfrom the French of Alain-René Lesage. In 1750 he obtained the degree of M.D. from Marischal College, Aberdeen. Later…
Picaresque novel, early form of novel, usually a first-person narrative, relating the adventures of a rogue or lowborn adventurer (Spanish pícaro) as he drifts from place to place and from one social milieu to another in his effort to survive. In its episodic structure the picaresque novel resembles the long, rambling…