page_title: Costumbrismo
section_title: Colombia
hierarchical_section_title: Costumbrismo / Literary costumbrismo in the Americas / Colombia
caption_attribution_description: fi 322 Isaacs, Jorge
context_page_description: Costumbrismo is the literary or pictorial interpretation of local everyday life, mannerisms, and customs, primarily in the Hispanic scene, and particularly in the 19th century. Costumbrismo is related both to artistic realism and to Romanticism, sharing the Romantic interest in expression as against simple representation and the romantic and realist focus on precise representation of particular times and places, rather than of humanity in the abstract. It is often satiric and even moralizing, but unlike mainstream realism does not usually offer or even imply any particular analysis of the society it depicts. When not satiric, its approach to quaint folkloric detail often has a romanticizing aspect.
  Costumbrismo can be found in any of the visual or literary arts; by extension, the term can also be applied to certain approaches to collecting folkloric objects, as well. Originally found in short essays and later in novels, costumbrismo is often found in the zarzuelas of the 19th century, especially in the género chico. Costumbrista museums deal with folklore and local art and costumbrista festivals celebrate local customs and artisans and their work.
context_section_description: Colombia can claim one of the earliest antecedents to the costumbrismo in El Carnero (written 1636–38, but not published until 1859) by Juan Rodríguez Freile (1566–1638 or 1640), Rodríguez's work begins as a chronicle of the conquest of New Granada, but as it approaches his own time it becomes more and more detailed and quotidian, and its second half is a series of narratives that, according to Stephen M. Hart, give "lip service" to conventional morality while taking "a keen delight in recounting the various skullduggeries of witches, rogues, murderers, whores, outlaws, priests and judges."
  Colombia can also claim a particularly rich tradition of costumbrismo in the 19th century and into the 20th: José Manuel Groot (1800–78); novelists Eugenio Díaz (1803–65), José Manuel Marroquín (1827–1908), and José María Vergara y Vergara (1831–72), all of whom collaborated on the magazine El Mosaico, la revista bogotana del costumbrismo (1858–71); Luis Segundo Silvestre (1838–87); and Jorge Isaacs (1837–95), whose sole novel María was praised by Alfonso M. Escudero as the greatest Spanish-language romantic novel.
  Other Colombian costumbristas are José Caycedo Rojas (1816–1897), Juan de Dios Restrepo (1823–94), Gregorio Gutiérrez González (1826–72), Ricardo Carrasquilla (1827–86), Camilo A. Echeverri (1827–87), Manuel Pombo (1827–98), José David Guarín (1830–90), Ricardo Silva (1836–87), José María Cordovez Moure (1835–1918), Rafael María Camargo (1858–1926; wrote under the pseudonym Fermín de Pimentel y Vargas), and Tomás Carrasquilla (1858–1940).
caption: Jorge Isaacs
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