The Wide and Silent Land: Environmental Imaginaries of the Plains in Latin American Literature

Abstract

The dissertation traces the evolution of dominant environmental imaginations of the Latin American plains as depicted in literary texts. It offers the close readings of texts in various genres, targeting the descriptions of plains geographies. I argue in favour of establishing an epistemology of the plains that dissolves the emphasis on national boundaries, whilst placing in relief the physical contours of biomes. Inspired by Lawrence Buell’s assertion in The Environmental Imagination—that our “environmental crisis involves a crisis of the imagination the amelioration of which depends on finding better ways of imaging nature and humanity’s relation to it”—my research seeks to piece together the salient environmental imaginations that are manifested in canonical texts in the hopes of better understanding how dominant imaginaries of the plains emerged within the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking Americas. By revealing the dominant images of the plains in canonical literary works, this dissertation points to the existence of peripheral images that are veiled by the overwhelming visibility of dominant imaginaries.