Algunas reflexiones sobre la recepción de La Araucana en la Historia de Alonso de Góngora Marmolejo

Ercilla's influence on contemporary authors who wrote about Chile and the Arauco war is undeniable. Although many of them lived through the war as soldiers, their use of that experience is varied. Some, impressed by the form of the epic poem, choose the royal octaves to narrate the events of the kingdom of Chile; others prefer to use the less magnificent style of prose, motivating themselves to bring their experience as soldiers in order to show their own vision of warfare. The soldier Alonso de Góngora Marmolejo, author of a Historia that covers the period from the arrival of Diego de Almagro to Chile until the end of the government of Melchor Bravo de Saravia, gives an account, in some of its pages, of a particular reception of the epic poem La Araucana. On the one hand, he tries to complete with his text the historical panorama that is more limited in Ercilla's verses, and that is also subject to the stylistic and rhetorical demands of the epic genre. At the same time, he works to demystify or, we can say, normalize, the figure of the indigenous in the chronicle, just as he also did with the figure of the governors.