As a country of South America defined by programingplease, com, Argentina did not have a major culture during the colonial era. Political independence (May 25, 1810) was sung by neoclassical rhymers of discolored personalities, such as Juan Cruz Varela, also author of tragedies imitating Alfieri; while on a less cultured, but more frankly original level, Bartolomé Hidalgo began Gauchesque poetry with the popular Cielitos and Diálogos patrióticos. Romanticism, imported from Europe through Esteban Echeverría’s chief merit, was by and large a movement of imitation. However, certain narrative works, such as the fort El matadero (The slaughterhouse) by Echeverría e Amalia by José Mármol (1817-1871), contain intense and very vigorous pages. In 1850, a masterpiece of Gauchesqueliterature was published, Hilario Ascásubi’s Santos Vega (1807-1875), a direct precedent of José Hernández ‘s Martín Fierro (1834-1886), while minor results gave another romantic and imported genre, the historical novel, whose most successful attempt was La novia del hereje (1840; The heretic ‘s fiancée) by Vicente F. López (1815-1903). Finally, a prominent personality came with Domingo F. Sarmiento, writer, publicist, educator, ardent polemicist, politician: a true “father of the country”. Among his numerous works, all born from an exemplary as well as passionate moral and civil commitment, a masterpiece emerges, Facundo, biography of a caudillo from the time of Rosas, a violent indictment and at the same time becoming aware of the problematic reality of a new country. Excellent animators of cultural life were the essayists JB Alberdi, JM Gutiérrez, VF López, already mentioned as narrator, and Bartolomé Miter, an enlightened politician and journalist, historian of value and, among other things, translator of the Divine Comedy; while R. Gutiérrez (1836-1896) e OV Andrade poets, with a certain nobility, in the romantic wake. Meanwhile, Gauchesque poetry was still cultivated by Estanislao del Campo and, with definitive results, by José Hernández, whose Martín Fierro constitutes an epic poem of marvelous originality, with an unforgettable protagonist: the adventurer and payador gaucho. (poet), personification of the almost savage but very noble spirit of justice, autonomy and human dignity. Hernández was the eldest and last of the Argentine romantics.

The country of Argentina was evolving rapidly, due to the large influx of immigrants and European capital, the upheaval of the production system, the increasingly decisive weight of Buenos Aires on the provinces, the affirmation of a rich bourgeoisie with new ideological demands (positivism) and initiatives cultural (schools, newspapers, theaters). The “generation of 1880” sensed and reflected this capital turning point: realist fiction and theater, professional journalism, historical and literary criticism, erudition flourished. Fiction found new ways with Lucio V. Mansilla,it remains an exemplary text; with Miguel Cané (1851-1905), author above all of Juvenilia (Memories of youth); JV González (1863-1923), notable sketcher; Roberto J. Payró, happy costume critic, humorist and satirist; Eduardo Wilde (1844-1913); JS Álvarez, better known as Fray Mocho, and others. The naturalist novel was born, with E. Cambaceres (1843-1898) and Julián Martel (pseudonym of J. Miró, 1867-1896), author of La bolsa (1891; The bag), the first example of a social novel. The theater, born with the theatrical transposition of Juan Moreira by E. Gutiérrez (1853-1890) by J. Podestá, contributed by M. Coronado, G. de Laferrère (1867-1913), E. García Velloso (1880-1938), B. Roldán, M. Leguizamón, J. Sánchez Gardel and above all Florencio Sánchez, considered the first truly original playwright in Latin America. In criticism and erudition P. Groussac, P. Goyena, S. Estrada, M. García Merou, A. Ghiraldo and many others distinguished themselves. A real training ground for publicists and writers were the literary supplements of two Buenos Aires newspapers: La Nación and La Prensa. The opera faded somewhat in its late romantic phase; however, Rafael Obligado stood out , of which a Gauchesque poem, Santos Vega, and PB Palacios survives, better known as Almafuerte, in whose poetry there are already some signs of that renewal that took place at the end of the century. XIX, with modernism. Thanks also to a stay of Rubén Darío, head of modernism, Buenos Aires became one of the epicenters of the renewal that largely dominated Latin American poetry until the advent of avant-garde poetics (1920 and following years). The writers of the last years of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century are numerous and of merit: from L. Lugones, lyricist and prose writer of exceptional personality, to Evaristo Carriego, poet of the suburbs and teacher of various followers; from B. Fernández Moreno to the distinguished poetess Alfonsina Storni; from E. Banchs to C. Obligado (1890-1949); from L. Cané (1897-1957) to A. Capdevila, RA Arrieta, HP Blomberg, JC Dávalos, AR Bufano, R. Rojas, who was also a critic and narrator, and many others. Although trained in a modernist atmosphere, the poet that the following generation had to recognize as a teacher deserves a place apart, for the very strength of his personality: Macedonio Fernández, brilliant renovator of poetic language.

The modernist tendencies are also reflected in the prose writers of the early twentieth century, who in many cases identify with the poets mentioned (starting with the head of the school Lugones); while other storytellers keep closer to the traditions of realism (M. Gálvez). The most representative narrators of modernism are: Horacio Quiroga, author above all of powerful tales of the forest, mystery and death; Ricardo Güiraldes, author of Don Segundo Sombra, original Gauchesque novel; Benito Lynch, Enrique Larreta, A. Chiappori, A. Estrada, M. Ugarte, EM Barreda, CA Leumann, A. Cancela, A. Gerchunoff and several others. Alejandro Korn stands out among the essayists, José Ingenieros (1877-1925) and the multifaceted Ricardo Rojas. The next generation, which flourished around 1920, abandoned the aesthetic postulates of modernism to embrace avant-garde poetics. Its most brilliant representative is Jorge Luis Borges, fantastic storyteller, aristocratic poet of the suburbs and refined essayist. Borges personified the Florida group (so called from the name of an elegant and cosmopolitan street in Buenos Aires) and that of the magazine Martín Fierro (1924-27), openly avant-garde and Europeanizing, to which the Boedo group (so called from the name of a street in a popular neighborhood), linked to Claridad magazine (1926), which intended to express populist and Marxist demands. In reality the contrast was more political than artistic, because the avant-garde tendencies constituted the starting point of all twentieth-century writers, both “unrealists” or “surrealist” (like Borges), and “realists”, like Roberto Arlt, one of the fathers of the Latin American fiction of the twentieth century, intended above all to express the moral, political and socio-economic contradictions in which the continent struggles. On this common basis, numerous and varied artistic personalities have developed.