Independence Literature. Independence and patriotic literature is a kind of transitional literature, written in Latin America from the end of the 18th century to the middle of the 19th century , which served as an incentive and drive to the independence process of these nations.
Summary
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- 1 Emergence
- 2 Features
- 3 Writers of this current
- 4 Sources
Emergence
The Enlightenment coming from Europe , like other previous artistic and philosophical movements, had its own personality here, due to the political circumstances that surrounded it, and a special repercussion, first, in the emancipation, and later independence, of the Spanish-American nations.
In Spanish America the enlightened ideal of the free man and the confidence in the laws of reason were felt with great depth.
The new viceregal orientation that the Bourbons had fostered was not yet consolidated and the idea of freedom spread everywhere. Curiously, neoclassicism, which in Europe was measure, restraint and reason, in the viceroyalties was a passion to emphasize and exalt Americanism .
The main medium that generated this literary trend was the press: liberal and autonomist ideas were spreading from newspapers, gazettes and literary magazines in order to create a public opinion favorable to the emancipatory process that was beginning; Perhaps at first the poems and writings of this trend did not have a great literary quality, but at the beginning of the 19th century it began to have great writers.
Characteristics
The independence literature is characterized by a theme centered on the exaltation of free peoples, by a patriotic sentiment that led to an encounter with the gaucho, the indigenous, the criollo and that would later generate the corresponding literatures. Likewise, he used a direct and pedagogical language, as he followed the precept of “teaching by delighting”. The so-called “mass education” arises at this time, since it was urgent to educate the entire population in the new national identity. Thus, not only schools were founded, but also the first language academies and the first national libraries.
Writers of this current
The first example that can be found in this field is that of the Venezuelan Simón Bolívar . A prominent leader of the independence process, he helped achieve independence not only from Venezuela , but also from Colombia , Peru , Panama , Ecuador, and Bolivia . He left for posterity some writings magnified by his figure, such as the Cartagena Manifesto and the Angostura Discourse , innumerably cited in later times.
Authors such as: José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi who always seek to combat the decomposition and arbitrariness of the Spanish in Mexico are also manifested in this literature , his most outstanding novel is El periquillo Sarniento , he played a great critical and disseminating role from the newspaper that he himself he founded, ” El Pensador Mexicano “; José Joaquín de Olmedo with his work La victoria de Junín. I sing to Bolívar ; Andrés Bello , a great humanist, wrote the Civil Code , he was the one who for the first time enunciated something like the proclamation of an American literary and cultural independence. He did it in one of his two most famous silvas, in his “Allocution to Poetry “, broken down from his great poetic project, América y José María Heredia , which goes from neoclassical poetry to romanticism .
In Cuba , perhaps José Martí is the clearest example of this same issue. Politician and thinker in favor of independence, he not only founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party , but also contributed to the formation of a properly Cuban literature with the publication of his so-called Simple Verses .
Among other writers of this current are the Argentine Manuel José de Lavardén with his Ode to Paraná ” ( 1801 ), in which he sings to the Paraná River as a symbol of America .
