Alternative Title: “La Araucana”
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association with Lautaro
discussed in biography
Latin American literature
...best of all the epics written about the conquest of the New World was by far Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga’s La Araucana (1569–89; The Araucaniad). The young soldier and courtier began the poem while engaged in campaigns against the Araucanian Indians of what is today Chile. While the poem has been praised for the...
...themes and heroes of Spanish epics celebrated overseas conquest or defense of the empire and the faith. Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga achieved epic distinction with Araucana (published 1569–90), chronicling native resistance to Spain’s conquest of Chile. A similar attempt at epic, Lope de Vega’s Dragontea (1598), retells...