This dissertation examines the relationship between literary writing and geographical discourse in Domingo Faustino Sarmientos Facundo: Civilización y barbarie (Argentina, 1845), Euclides da Cunhas Os Sertões (Brazil, 1902), and Rómulo Gallegoss Doña Bárbara (Venezuela, 1929). These narratives are often read as locating their authority in the discourse of science or within the didactic lessons of the national allegory. I contend that both readings simplify the legacies of these works and elide the significance behind the form coupled with their content. To fully understand the politics of these mixed forms, we must move from the general (empiricist science) to the particular (geographical discourse). I defend this move by demonstrating that Sarmiento, Cunha, and Gallegos emerge as literary figures alongside, and even participate in, the formation of politically oriented geographical institutions; between 1833 and 1910 over fifty geographical societies appear across the Americas, first in Mexico and later in Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela. This simultaneity between literary writing and institutional formation points to an understudied alignment between literature, geography, and politics in Latin America. I illustrate that, through a host of literary devices (e.g. metaphor, anaphora, alliteration, etc.), these writers give form to a consolidated nation-state by constructing a unifiedor potentially unify-ablegeographic space. By tracing how their narratives are informed by and in dialogue with previous non-Latin American land treatises (by, for example, Alexander von Humboldt, Henry Thomas Buckle, and Agustín Codazzi), I argue for the centrality of geographical discourse in literary, cultural, and social analysis. This project contributes to several conversations in the field, including the discourse of Eurocentrism, the issue of Amerindian versus Occidental epistemology, and the interconnectedness of race, inequality, and land distribution.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-04162010-174715 |
| Date | 23 June 2010 |
| Creators | Madan, Aarti |
| Contributors | Juan Duchesne-Winter, Susan Andrade, Joshua K. Lund, Bobby Chamberlain |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-04162010-174715/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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