Venezuelan literature

Literature written in Venezuelan territory began to develop at the time of the Conquest of America with the Chronicles of the Indies and later with the first autograph texts by colonial authors.

Literary activity was constant throughout the colonial period, but due to the late introduction of the printing press in the region, few works have survived to the present day.

Finally, it was in the late colonial period that the first known Venezuelan woman writer, the Carmelite nun Sor María Josefa de los Ángeles (1765-1818?)

The correspondence of the liberators and the official documents of his republican powers elucidate not only the colossal mosaic of his political genius, but the cleanliness of an exquisite and intense pen.

Of great beauty and deep philosophical concern My delirium on the Chimborazo, a unique masterpiece that distinguishes Simon Bolivar the contradictions of his time, and in the proportion that goes from the ethereal vision of a tribune to the humility of a prophet made for a nascent and promising world.

Simón Rodríguez (1769-1854), philosopher, in Caracas, in a well-thought-out essay on nascent republics, provides an interesting work, although scattered, according to the twists and turns of his personal life, not only a compilation of sociological concerns, but also of the urgency of intellectual code.

For the sponsorship of his famous student, Simon Bolivar, he partially manages to implement some of his ideas, later developed, and in an authentic Castilian and sometimes as ironic as Voltaire.

Works from this period address issues such as the War of Independence (e.g., Eduardo Blanco's 1881 Venezuela Heroica) and the political conflicts between conservatives and liberals.

In the 20th century, with the modernization and urbanization of Venezuela thanks to the economic boom provided by petroleum, some of its finest writers were: Teresa de la Parra, Rómulo Gallegos, Arturo Uslar Pietri, Salvador Garmendia.

At the start of the 21st century, Venezuelan fiction boomed with major new works by Federico Vegas, Francisco Suniaga, Ana Teresa Torres and Slavko Župčić.