thumb|200px|La Araucana, 1st part, [[editio princeps, Madrid, 1569.]]
La Araucana (also known in English as The Araucaniad) is a 16th-century epic poem in Spanish by Alonso de Ercilla, about the Spanish Conquest of Chile. It was considered the national epic of the Captaincy General of Chile and one of the most important works of the Spanish Golden Age (Siglo de Oro).
The poem
Structure
La Araucana consists of 37 cantos that are distributed across the poem's three parts. He occupied several positions in the household of Prince Philip (later King Philip II of Spain), before requesting and receiving appointment to a military expedition to Chile to subdue the Araucanians of Chile, he joined the adventurers. He distinguished himself in the ensuing campaign; but, having quarrelled with a comrade, he was condemned to death in 1558 by his general, García Hurtado de Mendoza. The sentence was commuted to imprisonment, but Ercilla was speedily released and fought at the Battle of Quipeo (14 December 1558). He was then exiled to Peru and returned to Spain in 1562.
Reception
Ercilla embodied the Renaissance ideal of being at once a man of action and a man of letters as no other in his time was. He was adept at blending personal, lived experience with literary tradition. He was widely acclaimed in Spain. There is an episode in Miguel de Cervantes's 17th-century novel Don Quixote, when a priest and barber inspect Don Quixote's personal library, to burn the books responsible for driving him to madness. La Araucana is one of the works which the men spare from the flames, as "one of the best examples of its genre", entirely Christian and honorable, and is proclaimed to be among the best poems in the heroic style ever written, good enough to compete with those of Ariosto and Tasso.
Voltaire was much more critical, describing the poem as rambling and directionless and calling the author more barbarous than the Indians he wrote about. He does, however, express admiration for the speech in Canto II, which he compares favorably to Nestor's speech in the Iliad.
In 1858, the French lawyer Antoine de Tounens, after reading the book in French translation, decided to go to South America to proclaim the kingdom of Araucanía and Patagonia with him as king. De Tounens gained the support of a few Mapuche leaders who proclaimed him king, but his kingship and kingdom was never recognized by Chile, Argentina or the European states.
Events
A revolt starts when the conqueror of Chile, Pedro de Valdivia is captured and killed by Mapuche (also known as Araucanian) Indians. Ercilla blames Valdivia for his own death, having mistreated the natives who had previously acquiesced to Spanish rule and provoking them into rebellion. However, having previously accepted the rule of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, the Araucanians were now in revolt against their legitimate sovereign lord. This is the ethical position of Ercilla: sympathy for the Indians' suffering, admiration for the courage of their resistance, criticism of Spanish cruelty, but loyalty to and acceptance of the legitimacy of the Spanish cause (the legitimate rule of a duly-constituted prince and the extension of Christianity). Although Ercilla's purpose was to glorify Spanish arms, the figures of Araucanian chiefs, the strong Caupolicán, the brilliant Lautaro, the old and wise Colocolo and the proud Galvarino, have proved the most memorable.
Key events include the capture and execution of Pedro de Valdivia; the death of the hero Lautaro in the Battle of Mataquito, and the execution of Caupolicán the Toqui for leading the revolt of the Araucanians (thanks to betrayal by one of their own); the encounter with a sorcerer who takes the narrator for a flight above the earth to see events happening in Europe and the Middle East; and the encounter with an Indian woman (Glaura) searching for her husband amongst the dead after a battle. This last is an indicator of the humanist side of Ercilla, and a human sympathy which he shows towards the indigenous people. The narrator claims that he attempted to have the life of the Indian chieftain spared.
The historicity of some events and characters have been put into question. Historian Diego Barros Arana has argued that the female character Janequeo is an invention that passed down without scrutiny as historical in the chronicles of the Jesuits Alonso de Ovalle and Diego de Rosales.
See also
- Pedro de Valdivia
- Francisco de Villagra
- Jerónimo de Alderete
- García Hurtado de Mendoza
- Arauco War
- Mapuche people
- Lautaro
- Caupolicán
- Colocolo