This essay looks at the idea of tradition from the specific ways in which Chilean literary history has constructed it. More specifically, its aim is to study this ideological construct from the notion of totalization, understood as a key discursive strategy of historical narratives within the national literary context. Analyzing the works of Ricardo Latcham and Cedomil Goic, as representative of predominant modes of historical narratives, I attempt to open the discussion on tradition beyond its essential imagination, and from the specific material conditions in which it is constructed in discourse.