Argentine literature - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Argentine literature is the body of literary work produced in Argentina. Among Argentina's best-known and most influential authors are Domingo Faustino Sarmiento

Domingo Faustino Sarmiento

Domingo Faustino Sarmiento was an Argentine activist, intellectual, writer, statesman and the seventh President of Argentina. His writing spanned a wide range of genres and topics, from journalism to autobiography, to political philosophy and history...

, José Hernández, Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...

, Adolfo Bioy Casares

Adolfo Bioy Casares

Adolfo Bioy Casares was an Argentine fiction writer, journalist, and translator. He was a friend and collaborator with his fellow countryman Jorge Luis Borges, and wrote what many consider one of the best pieces of fantastic fiction, the novella The Invention of Morel.-Biography:Adolfo Bioy...

, Roberto Arlt

Roberto Arlt

Roberto Arlt was an Argentine writer.-Biography:He was born Roberto Godofredo Christophersen Arlt in Buenos Aires on April 2, 1900. His parents were both immigrants: his father Karl Arlt was a Prussian from Posen and his mother was Ekatherine Iobstraibitzer, a native of Trieste and Italian speaking...

, Julio Cortázar

Julio Cortázar

Julio Cortázar, born Jules Florencio Cortázar, was an Argentine writer. Cortázar, known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, influenced an entire generation of Spanish speaking readers and writers in the Americas and Europe.-Early life:Cortázar's parents, Julio José Cortázar and...

, Manuel Puig

Manuel Puig

Manuel Puig was an Argentine author...

, and Ernesto Sabato

Ernesto Sabato

Ernesto Sabato , was an Argentine writer, painter and physicist. According to the BBC he "won some of the most prestigious prizes in Hispanic literature" and "became very influential in the literary world throughout Latin America"...

. Well-known women authors include Alfonsina Storni

Alfonsina Storni

Alfonsina Storni was one of the most important Latin-American poets of the modernist period.-Life:Storni was born in Sala Capriasca, Switzerland to an Argentine beer industrialist living in Switzerland for a few years. There, Storni learned to speak Italian...

, Silvina Ocampo

Silvina Ocampo

Silvina Ocampo Aguirre was an Argentine poet and short-fiction writer.Ocampo was born in Buenos Aires, the youngest of the six children of Manuel Ocampo and Ramona Aguirre. She was educated at home by tutors. One of her sisters was Victoria Ocampo, the publisher of the literarily important...

, Susana Calandrelli

Susana Calandrelli

Susana Calandrelli was an Argentine writer and teacher.-Biography:Born in Buenos Aires, Calandrelli wrote everything from poetry, stories, novels to essays, plays, lectures and study books. She entered several different cultural institutions and directed the Escuela de Servicio Social del Insituto...

, Alejandra Pizarnik

Alejandra Pizarnik

Alejandra Pizarnik was an Argentine poet.-Life and work:She was born on April 29, 1936 to Russian Jewish immigrant parents in Avellaneda, a suburb of Buenos Aires, Argentina. A year after entering the department of Philosophy and Letters at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Pizarnik published her...

, Olga Orozco

Olga Orozco

thumb|Olga Orozco, 1960Olga Orozco was an Argentine poet born in Toay, La Pampa. She spent her childhood in Bahía Blanca until she was 16 years old and she moved to Buenos Aires with her parents where she initiated her career as a writer.Orozco directed some literary publications using some...

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

Martin del Barco Centenera

Martín del Barco Centenera was a Spanish cleric, explorer and author.A street in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, is named after him.-Life:Born 1535 at Logrosán, in the Diocese of Plasencia in Extremadura region ; died c. 1602...

'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

Santiago del Estero

Santiago del Estero is the capital of Santiago del Estero Province in northern Argentina. It has a population of 244,733 inhabitants, making it the twelfth largest city in the country, with a surface area of 2,116 km². It lies on the Dulce River and on National Route 9, at a distance of...

, the first important urban settlement in Argentina), who wrote prose

Prose

Prose is the most typical form of written language, applying ordinary grammatical structure and natural flow of speech rather than rhythmic structure...

and poetry

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

. They were partly inspired by oral aboriginal

Argentine Amerindians

Argentina has thirty-five indigenous groups or Argentine Amerindians, according to the Complementary Survey of the Indigenous Peoples of 2004, in the first attempt in more than a hundred years that the government tried to recognize and classify the population according to ethnicity...

poetry—in particular, according to Carlos Abregú Virreyra, by the lules, juríes, diaguita
Diaguita
The Diaguita, also called Diaguita-Calchaquí, are a group of South American indigenous peoples. The Diaguita culture developed between the 8th and 16th centuries in what are now the provinces of Salta, Catamarca, La Rioja and Tucumán in northwestern Argentina, and in the Atacama and Coquimbo...

s and tonocotés. A symbiosis

Symbiosis

Symbiosis is close and often long-term interaction between different biological species. In 1877 Bennett used the word symbiosis to describe the mutualistic relationship in lichens...

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

National University of Córdoba

The National University of Córdoba, , is the oldest university in Argentina, and one of the oldest in the Americas. It is located in Córdoba, the capital of Córdoba Province. Since the early 20th century it has been the second largest university in the country in terms of the number of students,...

. 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

Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...

, baroque

Baroque

The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

and epic

Epic poetry

An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...

) grew under the protection of the independentist

May Revolution

The May Revolution was a week-long series of events that took place from May 18 to 25, 1810, in Buenos Aires, capital of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, a Spanish colony that included roughly the territories of present-day Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay...

fervor: Vicente López y Planes

Vicente López y Planes

Alejandro Vicente López y Planes was an Argentine writer and politician who acted as interim President of Argentina from July 7, 1827 to August 18, 1827...

, Pantaleón Rivarola and Esteban de Luca

Esteban de Luca

Esteban de Luca was an Argentine military officer, poet, and government official during the nation's early years.-Life and times:...

.
During 17th century, Argentine baroque 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. Previous to independence, some neoclassical

Neoclassicism

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 though the adoption of French romanticism

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

as a model, postulating the return to popular sources and to the medieval

Middle Ages

The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...

. This aesthetic and intellectual was brought by Esteban Echeverría

Esteban Echeverría

José Esteban Antonio Echeverría was an Argentine poet, fiction writer, cultural promoter, and political activist who played a significant role in the development of Argentine literature, not only through his own writings but also through his organizational efforts...

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

Juan Manuel de Rosas

Juan Manuel de Rosas , was an argentine militar and politician, who was elected governor of the province of Buenos Aires in 1829 to 1835, and then of the Argentine Confederation from 1835 until 1852...

forced him into exile.
In the middle of the 19th century José Mármol

José Mármol

José Mármol was an Argentine journalist, politician, librarian, and writer of the Romantic school.Born in Buenos Aires, he initially studied law, but abandoned his studies in favor of politics. In 1839, no sooner had he begun to make a name for himself than he was arrested for his opposition to...

published the first Argentine novel, Amalia
Amalia (novel)
Amalia is a 19th century political novel written by the exiled Argentine author José Marmol. First published serially in the Montevideo weekly, Amalia became Argentina's national novel...

(1851–1852), a historical novel

Historical novel

According to Encyclopædia Britannica, a historical novel is-Development:An early example of historical prose fiction is Luó Guànzhōng's 14th century Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which covers one of the most important periods of Chinese history and left a lasting impact on Chinese culture.The...

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.

As Rosas' power increased, more literary works from the opposition were produced, such as Juan Bautista Alberdi

Juan Bautista Alberdi

Juan Bautista Alberdi was an Argentine political theorist and diplomat. Although he lived most of his life in exile in Montevideo and Chile, he was one of the most influential Argentine liberals of his age.-Biography:...

's play El Gigante Amapolas, a good example of local sainete

Sainete

A sainete was a popular Spanish comic opera piece, a one-act dramatic vignette, with music. It was often placed at the end of entertainments, or between other types of performance. It was vernacular in style, and used scenes of low life. Active from the 18th to 20th centuries, it superseded the...

. In the genre of essay

Essay

An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...

, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento

Domingo Faustino Sarmiento

published his Facundo
Facundo
Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism is a book written in 1845 by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, a writer and journalist who became the seventh president of Argentina...

, a particular (re)vision of Facundo Quiroga's life from a deterministic point of view. Sarmiento conveyed aspects of sociology

Sociology

Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...

and semiotics in this analysis.
Echeverría, Mármol,and Sarmiento are among the group of writers known as Generación del 37, 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
Una Excursión a los indios ranqueles
Una Excursión a los indios ranqueles is a 1963 Argentine film....

, 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 deepley influenced by modernism

Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

. Juana Manuela Gorriti

Juana Manuela Gorriti

Juana Manuela Gorriti was an Argentine writer with extensive political and literary links to Bolivia and Peru.-Biography:Juana Manuela Gorriti was born in Salta near the Bolivian border. She came from a wealthy upper class family, and attended a convent school when she was eight...

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.

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

Rafael Obligado

Rafael Obligado was an Argentine poet and playwright.Obligado was the son of María Jacinta Ortiz Urién and Luis Obligado y Saavedra. During the 1880s, he became known as el poeta del Paraná . He wrote poetry with gaucho themes, but using cultured and educated language...

gave a lot of importance to the nature od the pampa, sharing some elements with a picturesque, imitation-gaucho

Gaucho

Gaucho is a term commonly used to describe residents of the South American pampas, chacos, or Patagonian grasslands, found principally in parts of Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Chile, and Southern Brazil...

literature, purporting to use the language of the gaucho

Gaucho

s and to reflect their mentality. The first current is known as poesía nativista (nativist poetry

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

) and is related with a literate tradition. The second (known as poesía gauchesca)developed in parallel as a part of that generation's understanding of national identity. Although it is also product of literate authors, this literature takes the voice of the gaucho as protagonist from the beginning. Gauchesca is related with payador's singing, being the payador a modern version of the illiterate medieval singers. A payador's work, in opposition to gauchesca, is sung spontaneously.

The first gauchesco author was Bartolomé Hidalgo who wrote during Independence War times, therefore his works had a strong political ideology. His compositions were mainly cielitos (a sort of payadoresque song with provocative political message) and diálogos patrióticos (conversations between two characters about current affairs).

In a second period, gauchesca was influenced by political-faction fights. Estanislao del Campo

Estanislao del Campo

Estanislao del Campo was an Argentine poet. Born in Buenos Aires to a unitarian family—the unitarians were a political party favoring a strong central government, rather than a federation—he fought in the battles of Cepeda and Pavón, defending Buenos Aires' rights.He is best remembered...

, and Hilario Ascasubi

Hilario Ascasubi

Hilario Ascasubi was an Argentine poet.Ascasubi was born in the back of a horse drawn cart, in Bell Ville city, while his mother was on her way to a wedding in Buenos Aires....

are the most representative writers of this period. Del campo wrote Fausto
Fausto
Fausto may refer to:* Fausto Amodei, Italian singer-songwriter* Fausto Bordalo Dias, Portuguese singer-songwriter* Fausto Carmona, Dominican baseball player* Fausto Cleva, Italian-born American operatic conductor...

, a poem which has been read both as a parody of gauchesca and an intelligent joke towards city people. 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

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

performance at Teatro Colón.

The last author of gauchesca is José Hernández, the author of Martín Fierro

Martín Fierro

Martín Fierro is a 2,316 line epic poem by the Argentine writer José Hernández. The poem was originally published in two parts, El Gaucho Martín Fierro and La Vuelta de Martín Fierro . The poem is, in part, a protest against the modernist tendencies of Argentine president Domingo Faustino Sarmiento...

. 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.

Generation of 1880

The generation of 1880 emphasized the European color and cultural supremacy of Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...

. The migratory

Immigration

Immigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence...

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

Pedro Bonifacio Palacios

Pedro Bonifacio Palacios , better known by his sobriquet, Almafuerte, was an Argentine poet.-Biography:Palacios was born in San Justo, a western suburb of Buenos Aires, into a humble family...

) was also a teacher and a journalist whose opinions and articles gave him a lot of problems.

Essay

Essay

is a recent genre that developed in the late 19th century: José Manuel Estrada

José Manuel Estrada

José Manuel Estrada was a lawyer, writer, Argentinean politician, eminent speaker and representative of Catholic thought.- Biography :...

, Pedro Goyena

Pedro Goyena

Pedro Goyena was an Argentinian jurist, politician and writer....

and Joaquín V. González

Joaquín V. González

Joaquín Víctor González was an Argentine educator, political scientist, writer, magistrate, and politician.- Early life :...

.

Narrative works oscillated between social issues and folk literature. The predominant tendency was Realism

Realism (arts)

Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...

, best represented by Miguel Cané

Miguel Cané

Miguel Cané was an Argentine writer, lawyer, academic, journalist, and politician....

in his autobiographical novel Juvenilia
Juvenilia
Juvenilia is a term applied to literary, musical or artistic works produced by an author during his or her youth. The term often has a retrospective sense. For example, written juvenilia, if published at all, usually appear some time after the author has become well-known for later works.The term...

. Other writers influenced by realism were Lucio V. Mansilla, Francisco Sicardi, Benito Lynch

Benito Lynch

Benito Lynch, Argentine novelist and short-story writer, was born in Buenos Aires on 25 July 1885, and died La Plata, Buenos Aires Province, 23 December 1951.-Origins and life:...

and Carlos María Ocantos. Naturalism

Naturalism (literature)

Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from the 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character...

was also an important tendency towards the end of the century. Argentine Naturalism was commanded by Eugenio Cambaceres

Eugenio Cambaceres

Eugenio Cambaceres Argentine writer and politician. In the 1880s he wrote four books, with Sin rumbo being his masterpiece. His promising literary career was cut short when he died of tuberculosis....

in his novels Sin rumbo and Música sentimental, almost forgotten today. Cambaceres was inspired by Émile Zola

Émile Zola

Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...

'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.

Modern

Towards the end of the 19th century, led by the Nicaragua

Nicaragua

Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...

n Rubén Darío

Rubén Darío

Félix Rubén García Sarmiento , known as Rubén Darío, was a Nicaraguan poet who initiated the Spanish-American literary movement known as modernismo that flourished at the end of the 19th century...

, modernism

Modernism

appears in Latin American literature. Preciosity of manner and a strong influence from Symbolism

Symbolism (arts)

Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...

sum up the new genre, which inspires the clearest voice in poetry, Leopoldo Lugones

Leopoldo Lugones

Leopoldo Lugones Argüello was an Argentine writer and journalist.-Early life:Born in Villa de María del Río Seco, a city in Córdoba Province, in Argentina's Catholic heartland, Lugones belonged to a family of landed gentry...

, who was the author of the first Argentine science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

story. The first truly modern generation in Argentine literature is the Martinfierristas

Martín Fierro

(c. 1922). The movement contributes an intellectual doctrine in which a number of current trends come together: the trend represented by the Florida group

Florida group

The Florida group were a Buenos Aires-based avant-garde literary group in the 1920s, known for their embrace of "art for art's sake"...

, adscript to ultraísmo

Ultraist movement

The Ultraist movement was a literary movement born in Spain in 1918, with the declared intention of opposing Modernismo, which had dominated Spanish poetry since the end of the 19th century....

, with Oliverio Girondo

Oliverio Girondo

Oliverio Girondo was an Argentine poet. He was born in Buenos Aires to a relatively wealthy family, enabling him from a young age to travel to Europe, where he studied in both Paris and England...

, Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges

, Leopoldo Marechal

Leopoldo Marechal

Leopoldo Marechal was one of the most important Argentine writers of the twentieth century.- Biographical notes :...

and Macedonio Fernández; and the trend of Boedo, impressed by Russian realism

Literary realism

Literary realism most often refers to the trend, beginning with certain works of nineteenth-century French literature and extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors in various countries, towards depictions of contemporary life and society "as they were." In the spirit of...

, with Raúl González Tuñón, César Tiempo y Elías Catelnuovo. Ricardo Güiraldes

Ricardo Güiraldes

Ricardo Güiraldes was an Argentine novelist and poet, one of the most significant Argentine writers of his era, particularly known for his 1926 novel Don Segundo Sombra, set amongst the gauchos.-Life:...

, however, remains classical in style, giving a whole new freshness to gauchesca poetry and writing what is perhaps the novel, Don Segundo Sombra
Don Segundo Sombra
Don Segundo Sombra is a 1926 novel by Argentine rancher Ricardo Güiraldes. Like José Hernández's poem Martín Fierro, its protagonist is a gaucho. However, unlike Hernandez's poem, Don Segundo Sombra does not romanticize the figure of the gaucho, but simply examines the character as a shadow cast...

.

Benito Lynch

Benito Lynch

Benito Lynch, Argentine novelist and short-story writer, was born in Buenos Aires on 25 July 1885, and died La Plata, Buenos Aires Province, 23 December 1951.-Origins and life:...

(1885–1951), an eccentric short-story writer who, like Güiraldes, does not easily fit into any "generation", wrote his quirky tales in an enchanted new-gauchoesque manner about this time.
Between the end of this decade and the beginning of the following one emerged the Novísimos ("Newest"), a generation of poets (Arturo Cambours Ocampo, Carlos Carlino and José Portogalo), fiction writers (Arturo Cerretani, Roberto Arlt

Roberto Arlt

, Luis Maria Albamonte and Luis Horacio Velázquez) and playwrights (Roberto Valenti, Juan Oscar Ponferrada and Javier Villafañe). The group promoted philosophical reflection and a new essence for Argentinidad. Leopoldo Marechal

Leopoldo Marechal

Leopoldo Marechal was one of the most important Argentine writers of the twentieth century.- Biographical notes :...

's novel Adán Buenosayres, published in 1948 and praised by Julio Cortázar

Julio Cortázar

in 1949.

Also worthy of note is the literary work of Leonardo Castellani

Leonardo Castellani

Leonardo Castellani , was an Argentine essayist, novelist, poet and theologian.Born in Reconquista, Santa Fe, Castellani was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 1930, he studied Philosophy and Theology in Rome. Back in his country, he worked in the Catholic press and went into politics as a...

(1899–1981), a Jesuit priest who left a considerable bulk of essays, novels, tales and poetry. Expelled from the Company of Jesus, the outspoken Castellani was also widely ignored - like his contemporary Marechal - by the literary intelligentsia of his time due to his nationalist ideology.

Generation of '37

The Generation of 1937 centers on poetry, where it developed the descriptive, nostalgic and meditative in the work of Ricardo E. Molinari, Vicente Barbieri

Vicente Barbieri

Vicente Barbieri was an Argentine poet born in Alberti. He was part of the Argentine Generation of '40, and is known for several poem collections like El bailarín , and many others. In the years 1955 and 1956 he was director of El Hogar magazine and president of the Sociedad Argentina de Escritores...

, Olga Orozco

Olga Orozco

, León Benarós and Alfonso Sola Gonzáles. Fiction writers subscribed to idealism

Idealism

In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...

and magic realism

Magic realism

Magic realism or magical realism is an aesthetic style or genre of fiction in which magical elements blend with the real world. The story explains these magical elements as real occurrences, presented in a straightforward manner that places the "real" and the "fantastic" in the same stream of...

, (María Granata, Adolfo Bioy Casares

Adolfo Bioy Casares

, Julio Cortázar

Julio Cortázar

, Silvina Ocampo

Silvina Ocampo

) or to a subtler form of realism

Realism (arts)

Manuel Mujica Laínez

Manuel Mujica Láinez was an Argentine novelist, essayist and art critic.-Biography:...

, Ernesto L. Castro, Ernesto Sabato

Ernesto Sabato

and Abelardo Arias) with some urban touches, as well as folk literature (Joaquín Gómez Bas and Roger Plá).

Essayists do not abound: Antonio Pagés Larraya, Emilio Carilla, Luis Soler Cañas are some of the few exceptions; but, of course, the greatest Argentine essayist after Sarmiento, Ezequiel Martínez Estrada

Ezequiel Martínez Estrada

Ezequiel Martínez Estrada was an Argentine writer, poet, essayist, and literary critic. An admired biographer and critic, he was often political in his writings, and was a confirmed anti-Peronist...

, belonged to the Generation of '37. Many of these writers and a number of European ones contributed extensively to Sur
Sur
Sur was a literary journal published in Buenos Aires. Its main backer was Victoria Ocampo, and it was supported intellectually by the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset. Many of the earliest editions of Sur carry the colophon of Ortega's Revista de Occidente...

, a literary journal published by Victoria Ocampo

Victoria Ocampo

Victoria Ocampo Aguirre was an Argentine writer and intellectual, described by Jorge Luis Borges as La mujer más argentina ....

, a noted commentator on the day's culture.

Neohumanism, Existentialism and other influences

In 1950, another milestone arose: the New Humanism

New Humanism

New Humanism or neohumanism were terms applied to a theory of literary criticism, together with its consequences for culture and political thought, developed around 1900 by the American scholar Irving Babbitt, and the scholar and journalist Paul Elmer More...

, a response to World War II and its aftermath. On one level are avant-gardists

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

like Raúl Gustavo Aguirre, Edgar Bayley and Julio Llinás; on another, existentialists

Existentialism

Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...

: José Isaacson, Julio Arístides and Miguel Ángel Viola. Further away are those who reconcile both tendencies with a regionalist tendency: Alfredo Veiravé, Jaime Dávalos and Alejandro Nicotra. Other fiction writers left a highly charged testimony of the times: Beatriz Guido

Beatriz Guido

Beatriz Guido was an Argentine novelist and screenwriter.Guido was born in Rosario, Santa Fe Province, the daughter of architect Ángel Guido and of Uruguayan actress Berta Eirin...

, David Viñas

David Viñas

David Viñas was an Argentine dramatist, critic, and novelist.-Life and career:Viñas grew up in Buenos Aires, and enrolled in the University of Buenos Aires, becoming head of the student organization Federación Universitaria de Buenos Aires...

, Marco Denevi

Marco Denevi

Marco Denevi was an Argentine award-winning author of novels and short stories, as well as a lawyer and journalist. His work is characterized by its originiality and depth, as well as a criticism of human incompetence. His first work, a mystery called Rosaura a las diez , was a Kraft award...

and Silvina Bullrich

Silvina Bullrich

Silvina Bullrich was a best-selling Argentine novelist, as well as an accomplished journalist, translator and screenwriter.-Life and work:...

. In a majority of the writers, a strong influence of Anglo-Saxon and Italian poetry

Italian poetry

-Important Italian poets:* Giacomo da Lentini a 13th Century poet who is believed to have invented the sonnet.* Guido Cavalcanti Tuscan poet, and a key figure in the Dolce Stil Novo movement....

can be perceived. Of particular interest are the poetic works of two of Marechal's disciples, the poets Rafael Squirru

Rafael Squirru

Rafael Squirru , is an Argentine poet, lecturer, art critic and essayist.- Biographical notes :Born and raised in Buenos Aires, Squirru was educated at Saint Andrew's Scot School and at the Jesuit El Salvador Secondary School...

and Fernando Demaría.

A new trend started in 1960, continuing until about 1990. Its influences are heterogeneous: Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...

, Camus

Albert Camus

Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...

, Eluard; some Spanish writers, like Camilo José Cela; and previous Argentine writers like Borges, Arlt, Cortázar and Marechal. Two trends were in evidence: the tracing of metaphysical

Metaphysics

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...

time and historicity

Historicity

Historicity may mean:*the quality of being part of recorded history, as opposed to prehistory*the quality of being part of history as opposed to being a historical myth or legend, for example:** Historicity of the Iliad**Historicity...

(Horacio Salas, Alejandra Pizarnik

Alejandra Pizarnik

, Ramón Plaza) and the examination of urban and social disarray: (Abelardo Castillo

Abelardo Castillo

Abelardo Castillo is an Argentine writer, born in the city of San Pedro, Buenos Aires. He practised amateur boxing in his youth...

, Marta Lynch, Manuel Puig

Manuel Puig

Manuel Puig was an Argentine author...

, Alicia Steinberg).

Dark military days

The 1970s are a dark period for intellectual creation in Argentina. The sign of the epoch is exile

Exile

Exile means to be away from one's home , while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return...

(Juan Gelman

Juan Gelman

Juan Gelman is an Argentine poet. He has published more than twenty books of poetry since 1956. He won the Cervantes Prize in 2007, the most important in Spanish literature...

, Antonio Di Benedetto

Antonio di Benedetto

Antonio di Benedetto , was an Argentine journalist and writer.-Publishing Career:...

) or death (Roberto Santoro, Haroldo Conti, and Rodolfo Walsh

Rodolfo Walsh

Rodolfo Jorge Walsh was an Argentine writer, considered the founder of investigative journalism. He is most famous for his Open Letter from a Writer to the Military Junta which he wrote the day before his murder, protesting that their economic policies were having an even greater effect on...

). Remaining literary journalists, like Liliana Heker

Liliana Heker

Liliana Heker is an Argentine writer. She wrote and edited left-wing literary journals during the Dirty War of state-sponsored violence in the 1970s and 1980s, using veiled critiques as a means of protest and engaging in vigorous debate with exiled writers such as Julio Cortázar.She was born in...

, veiled their opinions in their work. Some journalists (Rodolfo Walsh

Rodolfo Walsh

), poets (Agustín Tavitián and Antonio Aliberti), fiction writers (Osvaldo Soriano

Osvaldo Soriano

Osvaldo Soriano, Journalist and writer. Born January 6, 1943 in Mar del Plata, Argentina – died on January 29, 1997 in Buenos Aires.-Biography:...

, Fernando Sorrentino), and essayists (Ricardo Herrera, María Rosa Lojo

María Rosa Lojo

María Rosa Lojo is an author born in Buenos Aires. Her father, a Republican from Galicia, had exiled himself to Argentina after the Civil War. She directs two research projects and offers a doctoral seminar at the Universidad del Salvador. She is a longstanding contributor to the Literary...

) stand out among the vicissitudes and renew the field of ethical and aesthetic ideas.

Current

The 1990s are marked by reunion among survivors of different generations, in an intellectual coalition for the review of values and texts as Argentina faced the end of the century. Some examples are Alan Pauls, Mario Areca, Aníbal Cristobo

Aníbal Cristobo

Aníbal Cristobo is an Argentine writer. Published poems and poetry books, as well as collaborations as editor.-Biography:...

, Ernesto de Sanctis, and some more.

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Origins

Cultural independence from Spain

Literatura Gauchesca

Generation of 1880

Modern

Generation of '37

Neohumanism, Existentialism and other influences

Dark military days

Current

See also

External links