Argentine literature, i.e. the set of literary works produced by writers who originated from Argentina, is one of the most prolific, relevant and influential in the whole Spanish speaking world, with renowned writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Leopoldo Lugones and Ernesto Sábato.
History Origins As a matter of fact, the name of the country itself comes from a Latinism which first appeared in a literary source: Martin del Barco Centenera's epic poem La Argentina (1602). This composition runs 10.000 verses and describes the landscape as well as the conquest of the territory. The word was reintroduced in Argentina manuscrita, a prose chronicle by Ruy Díaz de Guzmán.
Argentine literature began around 1550 with the work of Matías Rojas de Oquendo and Pedro González de Prado (from Santiago del Estero, the first important urban settlement in Argentina), who wrote prose and poetry. They were partly inspired by oral aboriginal poetry—in particular, according to Carlos Abregú Virreyra, by the lules, juríes, diaguitas and tonocotés. A symbiosis emerged between the aboriginal and Spanish traditions, creating a distinct literature, geographically limited (well into the 18th century) to the Argentine north and central regions, with the province of Córdoba as its center, due to the foundation of the National University of Córdoba. Two names stand out from this period: Gaspar Juárez Baviano, and Antonia de la Paz y Figueroa, also known as "Beata Antula".
Gradually, with the economic prosperity of the port, the cultural axis moved eastward. The letters of the colonial age (Viceroyalty-neoclassicism, baroque and epic) grew under the protection of the independentist fervor: Vicente López y Planes, Pantaleón Rivarola and Esteban de Luca.
During the 17th century, Argentine baroque literature was poor in comparison with that from Europe and some other parts of the New World. The only remarkable poet of this period was Fray José Luis de Tejeda who wrote Coronas líricas and El peregrino de Babilonia
Cultural independence from Spain
As in the rest of the continent, strong feelings of emancipation from Spain were present in Argentina. Before independence, some neoclassical authors such as Juan Cruz Varela produced numerous works related with this revolutionary spirit but still under the paradoxical Spanish domain.
Argentina's true break with Spanish tradition was manifested in literature through the adoption of French romanticism as a model, postulating the return to popular sources and to the medieval. This aesthetic and intellectual was brought by Esteban Echeverría who wrote the first local and realistic story, El Matadero ("The slaughterhouse"), as well as the nativist poem La Cautiva ("The Captive"), with the Pampas as its background. His barbed wit and opposition to powerful Buenos Aires governor Juan Manuel de Rosas forced him into exile.
In the middle of the 19th century José Mármol published the first Argentine novel, Amalia (1851–1852), a historical novel set during the dark year of 1840 which mixed fictional characters (Amalia, Daniel Bello, Eduardo Belgrano) with actual historical characters like Juan Manuel de Rosas.María Minellono. "Entre el folletín y la novela histórica; el problema del género en Amalia de José Mármol"
As Rosas' power increased, more literary works from the opposition were produced, such as Juan Bautista Alberdi's play El Gigante Amapolas, a good example of local sainete. In the genre of essay, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento published his Facundo, a particular (re)vision of Facundo Quiroga's life from a deterministic point of view. Sarmiento conveyed aspects of sociology and semiotics in this analysis.
Echeverría, Mármol and Sarmiento are among the group of writers known as Generación del 37, who are considered the first generation of local intellectuals.
Poetry lessened in combative spirit and turned towards the anecdotal and sentimental: Carlos Guido y Spano and Ricardo Gutiérrez, the chronicle writers of folk literature. Lucio V. Mansilla published in 1870 Una excursión a los indios ranqueles, a sort of chronicle of a voluntary expedition to sign a peace treaty with the Indians. His work (enrolled in a realistic aesthetic) anticipated Generación del '80, which would be deeply influenced by modernism. Juana Manuela Gorriti was one of the first popular female writers, mainly due to her melodramatic narrative works like the novel La hija del mazorquero and the foundation of La alborada, a cultural magazine.
Generation of 1837
Marcos Sastre, a bookseller in the city of Buenos Aires, offered in 1837 a room in his "Librería Argentina" to serve as a literary salon, where meetings of intellectual reading and discussion groups were held. The inaugural session took place in June 1837.
The first narrative often considered "foundational" by many critics was written before the mid-19th century by Esteban Echeverría (1805–1851), a liberal writer and politician associated with Romanticism and the so-called Generation of '37. His short story The Slaughter Yard, which depicts a brutal scene of torture and murder in the slaughterhouses of Buenos Aires, is notable for its realism, which was unusual for the time. As noted by Carlos Gamerro, Echeverría's writing engages with symbolic violence associated with the mazorqueros, and he also recalls the well-known phrase by David Viñas referring to this story: "Argentine literature begins with a rape".
From its beginnings, Argentine literature has been closely tied to political context. At that time, Argentine society was divided into two factions: Unitarians and Federalists. This conflict is reflected in El matadero and many other works. On this basis, David Viñas stated: "Argentine literature begins with Rosas".
Literatura Gauchesca
European-oriented, indeed Euro-centric, themes and styles would remain the norm in Argentine letters, especially from Buenos Aires, during this century. The (romantic) poetry as La cautiva or the latter Santos Vega by Rafael Obligado gave a lot of importance to the nature of the pampa,Eduardo Romano. El nativismo como ideología en "Santos Vega" de Rafael Obligado: Editorial Biblos sharing some elements with a picturesque, imitation-gaucho literature, purporting to use the language of the gauchos and to reflect their mentality. The first current is known as poesía nativista (nativist poetry) and became a literary tradition. The second (known as poesía gauchesca) developed in parallel as a part of that generation's understanding of national identity. Although it also is a product of literary authors, this writing takes the voice of the gaucho as protagonist from the beginning. Gauchesca is related to payador's singing, a payador being a modern equivalent of the illiterate medieval singers. A payador's work, in opposition to gauchesca, is sung spontaneously.Wikipedia article
The first gauchesco author was Bartolomé Hidalgo who wrote during the war of independence and therefore his works had a strong political ideology. His compositions were mainly cielitos (payadoresque songs but with provocative political messages) and diálogos patrióticos (conversations between two characters about current affairs).
In a second period, gauchesca was influenced by political-faction fights. Estanislao del Campo, and Hilario Ascasubi are the most representative writers of this period. Del Campo wrote Fausto, a poem which has been read both as a parody of gauchesca and an intelligent joke towards city people.Enrique Anderson Imbert. Prólogo a Fausto. Buenos Aires: Editorial de Belgrano In the poem, Anastasio El Pollo meets a friend and tells him his impressions on particular event: he has seen the Devil. What El Pollo doesn't know (or pretends he doesn't) is that all he saw was actually an opera performance at Teatro Colón.Enrique Anderson Imbert. Análisis de Fausto. Buenos Aires: CEAL, 1968
The last author of gauchesca is José Hernández, the author of Martín Fierro. Gauchesca leaves its political influences and becomes social in the sense that gauchos are disappearing, mainly due to Sarmiento and the new economic model. Hernández is considered the responsible for consolidating the gauchesco style.
Martín Fierro
Martín Fierro is a narrative poem by José Hernández, considered an exemplary work of the gaucho literature genre in Argentina and Uruguay. It was first published in 1872 under the title El Gaucho Martín Fierro, and its sequel, La vuelta de Martín Fierro, appeared in 1879.
The poem portrays the independent, heroic, and resilient character of the gaucho. It is also, in part, a protest against the Europeanizing and modernizing tendencies of Argentine president Domingo Faustino Sarmiento.
Generation of 1880
The Generation of the '80 (Spanish: Generación del '80) was a group of Argentine intellectuals and writers active around the 1880s. Figures such as Lucio V. Mansilla and Miguel Cané drew on their European experiences to establish a new intellectual cycle grounded in Argentine criteria.
In 1880, two major political and social events took place in Argentina: on 20 September, the federalization of the city of Buenos Aires was approved, and on 12 October Julio Argentino Roca assumed the presidency. This marked the beginning of a period of prosperity and relative stability, during which foreign investment increased significantly. The arrival of large numbers of immigrants—Italian, Spanish, French, Polish, Russian, Jewish, and German—between 1870 and 1910 brought about substantial changes in Argentine society.
Within this context, the generation looked toward Europe while maintaining a strong national orientation. As noted by Alicia M. Zorrilla de Rodríguez, although “eyes were set on Europe,” the Generation of the '80 was not merely Europeanizing, but rather expressed an intense patriotic sentiment rooted in local identity.
The interests of this generation extended beyond literature and journalism to include politics, diplomacy, and the military. Through their works, these authors sought to recover the past in order to compare it with the present, reflecting on the transformation of Buenos Aires under the forces of modernization.
Notable works associated with this perspective include La gran aldea and Costumbres bonaerenses (1882) by Lucio Vicente López; Juvenilia (1884) by Miguel Cané; Retratos y recuerdos (1894) by Lucio V. Mansilla; and Aguas abajo by Eduardo Wilde. Another aim of these writers was to depict social reality in order to denounce its problems, often employing naturalist techniques.
The generation of 1880 emphasized the European color and cultural supremacy of Buenos Aires. The migratory current of mixed ethnicity accentuated the change of the big village for the cosmopolitan metropolis. The poetry of this period is lyric: Leopoldo Díaz y Almafuerte. The latter usually depicts the worker's life in passionate attacks against the contradictions of contemporary society. Almafuerte (pseudonym of Pedro Bonifacio Palacios) was also a teacher and a journalist whose opinions and articles gave him a lot of problems.
Essay is a genre that developed in the late 19th century: José Manuel Estrada, Pedro Goyena and Joaquín V. González.
Narrative works oscillated between social issues and folk literature. The predominant tendency was Realism, best represented by Miguel Cané in his autobiographical novel Juvenilia. Other writers influenced by realism were Lucio V. Mansilla, Francisco Sicardi, Benito Lynch and Carlos María Ocantos. Naturalism was also an important tendency towards the end of the century. Argentine Naturalism was commanded by Eugenio Cambaceres in his novels Sin rumbo and Música sentimental, almost forgotten today. Cambaceres was inspired by Émile Zola's theory about the naturalistic approach to literary work, but its ideology suffered considerable alterations. Julián Martel and Antonio Argerich with added a highly loaded moral touch to Argentine naturalism.