gaucho literature

gaucho literature

Latin American poetic genre that imitates the payadas (“ballads”) traditionally sung to guitar accompaniment by wandering gaucho minstrels of Argentina and Uruguay. By extension, the term includes the body of Latin American prose literature about the gaucho way of life and philosophy. Long a part of folk literature, gaucho lore became a subject of 19th-century Romantic verse, as well as prose that often explores themes of conflict between the old and the new.