In addition to these serious historical works the first period following the conquest saw many writers of personal narratives, heroic, narrative and semi-lyrical poems, a considerable number of which were based on personal ad ventures or reputed to be so. These chronicles are interesting for the light they give on the obscure history, customs, quarrels and habits of the period. Among these are the rhymed chronicles,
Araucan0 of Alonso Ercilla y Zulliga of Chile (1533-94) ; also
Do mad& (1596), (El Vasauro' (1633) and
Ig nacio de Loyola) of Pedro deOlfia, also of Chile; (Purer' Inclomito) of Hernando Alvarez of To ledo; the
looked upon as valuable owing to the side lights they throw upon the age in which they were written. But their popularity prevented the production of prose works of a similar char acter to any great extent. However there were a few prose productions which had considerable influence upon colonial literature owing to their general popularity and the extent to which they were read throughout Latin America. Among these were the
of Francisco Nunez de Pifieda, written in the latter half of the 17th century; and the 'RestauraciOn de la Imperial y conversion de almas infieles' of Fray Juan Barrenechea (1693). The religious literature depicting the lives of the saints and other sacred characters during the first two centuries of Spanish rule in America, though plentiful, is of no great interest, except in so far as it shows the efforts the priests and monks made to present religious dogma in a pleasing form for the enlightenment of the Europeans in America and in a still simpler and more realistic form for the instruction of the Indian and mes tizo population (;See account of the religious drama in the article on MEXICAN LTTERATURE). Of the most interesting and ambitious religious epics of this period are
Cristiada' of Pray Diego de Ojeda of Lima (1611) ; and the
Rosa de Lima' of Luis Antonio de Ovedo (Peru 1711). The most interesting chronicler (and a fairly good poet) of the first century of the Spanish occupation of America was Bernardo de Balbuena (for whom, see