Gauchesque literature has a central place in the Argentine canon, and Borges wrote repeatedly on the subject, with particular reference to works by Sarmiento, Hernández, and Guiraldes. ’The Argentine Writer and Tradition’ houses some of his most mature critical assessments, as part of the ongoing debate about national literature. Borges edited collections of gauchesque poetry and of literary criticism of the kind. In his creative corpus, ’The End’ attempts to do away with an outdated archetype, and ’The South’ is his acknowledgement that the gaucho now exists only in literature.