“They neither have churches nor schools”. The Gaucho and the cultural models in the River Plate novels

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the cultural models in two Gaucho novels: José J. de Vedia’s Aventuras de un centauro en la América Meridional (1868), and Eduarda Mansilla’s Pablo, o la vida en las pampas (1869). Both novels propose a gaucho’s ethopoeia. This was later developed by others writers, who also established new generic conventions for sentimental novels.
The Gaucho´s lack of culture about religion, education and citizenship entail new cultural paradigms (Lotman). These are linked to political discourses, the press and literature, and also turn the national romance into a means of complaint, a discourse more rooted onto a realistic aesthetics than onto a romantic one.