Traveler, Orphan, Pilgrim. The Author’s Place in La Argentíada (1857) by Manuel Rogelio Tristany

Abstract

In 1857 a late epic poem called La Argentíada. Poema histórico-descriptivo escrito en variedad de metros por un solitario de América was published in Montevideo. Its author, the Catalan Manuel Rogelio Tristany, had arrived in the region in 1852 fleeing the civil war between “Carlists” and “Constitutionalists”: his family had provided the Carlist troops with two of their most conspicuous representatives, the priest and guerrilla fighter Benito Tristany, shot in Solsona, and Rafael Tristany, commander of the Carlist forces in Catalonia. This work focuses its analysis on some passages of La Argentíada, considering in particular Tristany's construction of the author figure. Although it is an epic poem with an American theme whose poetic numen is Christopher Columbus, the author, especially from the paratexts, legitimizes his condition as an orphan and exiled from Spain as a solitary traveler who offers to the formation of the South American homeland his knowledge of the history and geography of the region. And in this sense, the link between the work and the travel stories is considered, emphasizing, in particular, the discursive procedures linked to description, which operate in the total structure of the poem.