This book looks to the writings of prolific statesmen like D.F. Sarmiento, Estanislao Zeballos, and Euclides da Cunha to unearth the literary and political roots of the discipline of geography in nineteenth-century Latin America. Tracing the simultaneous rise of text-writing, map-making, and institution-building, it offers new insight into how nations consolidated their territories. Beginning with the titanic figures of Strabo and Humboldt, it rereads foundational works like Facundo and Os sertões as examples of a recognizably geographical discourse. The book digs into lesser-studied bulletins, correspondence, and essays to tell the story of how three statesmen became literary stars while spearheading Latin America's first geographic institutes, which sought to delineate the newly independent states. Through a fresh pairing of literary analysis and institutional history, it reveals that words and mapsliterature and geographymarched in lockstep to shape nationalterritories, identities, and narratives.

Represents the first systematic examination of the relationship between literature and geography in Latin American narrative Makes an intervention not only in geocriticism and spatial studies, but also ecocriticism, an ever more important field Examines the relations of cartography to environmental collapse Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Autorentext

Aarti Smith Madan is Associate Professor of Spanish and International Studies in the Department of Humanities and Arts at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA, where she also serves as Director of the Buenos Aires Project Center. She was raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee and lives in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA.

Inhalt

1. Heretofore: Delineation.- 2. Geographical Discourse and Alexander von Humboldt .- 3. Sarmiento the Geographer: Unearthing the Literary in Facundo.- 4. Estanislao Zeballos and the Transatlantic Science of Statecraft.- 5. Euclides da Cunha's Literary Map, or Including Os Sertões.- 6. Hereafter: Off the Grid.- Bibliography.- Index.