America became a reality in western civilization from the early period of the Golden Age in the literature of the Iberian peninsula. By the seventeenth century the works of a few outstanding personalities already born in America had been added to the bibliographical sources available in the European libraries and universities.
The literature of Puerto Rico has also had a place in the panorama of Spanish American letters since the arrival of European culture at the end of the fifteenth century and the era of conquest and colonization during the sixteenth century. The trends of the literary history of this Caribbean island have followed the pattern of the literary development in the New World. It was initiated with the letters and the chronicles, the epic poems and the annals of the first men entrusted with the mission of conquest and settlement in the newly acquired possessions.