Mary

The novel María by Jorge Isaacs is considered the masterpiece of Colombian romantic literature. Due to its theme and structure, it is influenced by the French romantic current. However, the idyll between María and Efraín is inserted in a totally new framework: the nature of Valle del Cauca.
The central plot of the novel is the unfortunate romance between two young men. Efraín, son of a rich landowner from the Cauca region, and his cousin María.
The four fundamental themes of romanticism:

• Love
• nature
• and death

They structure the framework of this novel and project it as a work that surpasses its contemporaries in complexity.
In María Jorge Isaacs he stages many autobiographical elements. The house where the idyll takes place was the same one in which the author lived: the hacienda El paraíso. Isaacs, like Efraín, were also born and lived in Valle del Cauca, were the children of a Jewish father, converted to Christianity, studied in the capital and were great readers of poetry.
Although the story par excellence is a tragic romance, there are also other subthemes that prove the uniqueness of this work:

• patriarchal authority,
• slavery,
• Costumbrismo
• and nature.

Edition by Benito Varela Jácome.