SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE. TILE COLONIAL PERIOD. Spanish-American liter ature owes almost nothing to the few fragments of Nahua and Inca literature that survived the de struction of hieroglyphs by the Spanish con querors. The early literature centres largely around the City of Mexico. (See MEXICAN LITERATURE.) As subsidiary literary centres, Bogotd, Quito. Lima, and Guatemala became noted during the later colonial era.
The subject matter of intellectual colonial ef fort consists largely of the preparation of gram mars and dictionaries of native languages (Mc nkulez y Pelayo in La cieveia espafiola gives a list of fifty-nine of the principal ones), and of catechisms and sermons in both Spanish and the native vernacular. This work was largely utilita rian in object., and, save for the occasional trans lation of some fragment of native hieroglyphs, is merely of philological interest. Another branch of literary activity was the writing of the history of the conquest and early settlement of America, or the compiling of materials for that purpose. During the later colonial period works on natural and political science began also to appear. The remaining literary effort, directed toward what is generally called pure literature, produced a few works of merit (so recognized by the mother country), which were of impor tance in the further literary development of Amer ica. These writers (largely ecclesiastics, though occasionally some conquistador handled the pen equally well with the sword), described the con flicts of the Spaniards with the natives, as did the Chilean epic poet Pedro de Ofia (born c.1571) in his draceuno domado and Pedro de Peralta y Barnuevo (d. 1760; of Spanish birth) in his Lima. fundada ; or they depicted the beauties of natural scenery and the happenings of agricultural life, as did the Guatemalan Rafael Landivar (1731 93), in his bucolic Latin poem, Rusticatio Mexi cane; or they collected the materials for history and wrote excellent accounts of the pacification and settlement of America, as did Juan de Ve lasco, of Ecuador, in his Historia del r•cino de Quito, and the Jesuits Ovalle and Rosas in Chile.
Fr. Juan de liarrenechea y Albis, of the latter country, in his Restauracion de la Imperial (1693), made a solitary attempt at novel-writing. There appeared also some worthy attempts at de votional writing, both in prose and verse, such as the Sentimientos espirituales of Sor Francisca Josefa de In Concepcion (d. at Tnnja, 1742), and La Cristiada of Diego de Hojeda (who lived in Lima earl• in the seventeenth century). Juan de Castellanos (sixteenth century), of New Gra nada, in his Elegies de earones ilustres, not only celebrated in hendeeasyllabic verse the deeds of the early explorers of America and of his native viceroyalty, hut also achieved the doubtful distinction of writing the longest poem in the language. The crowning glory of New Granada, however, lies in the intellectual movement which, the leadership of Jose Celestino Mutis (1732-1808), the "illustrious pa triarch of botanists of the New World," and the many-sided Jose de Caldas (1741-1816), became memorable in the Spanish-American scientific literature of the latter half of the eighteenth century. During this same period the Ecuado rean Antonio de Alcedo (died 1812) produced his Diccionario geop-i•afico-histor•ico (lc las Indias oc eidentales (1786-SO), a translation of which, by G. A. Thompson, with numerous additions, was published in London (1812-15).