Introduction Mapping the Amazon after the Rubber Boom

Abstract

The introduction outlines the book’s basic premises, its theoretical framework and organization. After the decline of the Amazon Rubber Boom (1850-1920), there was an increase in novels taking place in the region, written by authors who travelled to the Amazonian frontiers of their respective countries. These novels share both a preoccupation with the insufficiency of paper maps for navigating Amazonia and a cartographic impulse to map the region narratively. The introduction describes the geocritical methods applied to understanding how such novels negotiated and contested institutional projections onto Amazonia. A brief overview of spatial theory justifies the claim that those representations participated in the production of a variety of kinds of spaces in the region. The introduction also situates the project’s interventions in a larger body of scholarship on Amazonian literature and cultural production.