''Elegías de varones ilustres de Indias'' is an
epic poem
An epic poem, or simply an epic, is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants.
...
written in the late sixteenth century by
Juan de Castellanos.
Description
The work gives a detailed account of the colonization of the
Caribbean and the territories in present-day
Colombia and
Venezuela
Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...
. It describes the settlement companies and foundation of cities as well as vivid depictions of indigenous cultures, such as the
Muisca
The Muisca (also called Chibcha) are an indigenous people and culture of the Altiplano Cundiboyacense, Colombia, that formed the Muisca Confederation before the Spanish conquest. The people spoke Muysccubun, a language of the Chibchan langu ...
, and natural history, making this text an important early chronicle of the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Besides its historical value, it is notable for the use of multiple
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history
The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...
-era literary styles, including the
elegy
An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to ''The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy'', "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometime ...
,
epic, pilgrimage tale,
pastoral romance,
chivalric romance
As a literary genre, the chivalric romance is a type of prose and verse narrative that was popular in the noble courts of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a chivalri ...
and other literary forms.
The book contains one of the earliest descriptions of the
New World species potato
The potato is a starchy food, a tuber of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'' and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae.
Wild potato species can be found from the southern Unit ...
(''
Solanum colombianum''), an unknown plant in the Old World before the discovery of the Americas by Europeans.
See also
*
Spanish conquest of the Muisca
*
Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, ''
El Carnero
''El Carnero'' ( en, The Sheep) is the colloquial name of a Spanish language colonial chronicle whose title was ''Conquista i descubrimiento del nuevo reino de Granada de las Indias Occidentales del mar oceano, i fundacion de la ciudad de San ...
''
References
External links
*
''Elegías de Varones Ilustres de Indias'' - Complete text-
Google Books
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...
16th-century poems
Colombian books
History of the Muisca
History of Colombia
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