Through the use of narrative analysis, Belton explores the production of cultural knowledge about Venezuela's Orinoco River—the second largest in the Neotropics and the third largest in the world—and surrounding environs. Beginning with the earliest images of America from the voyages of Columbus, he examines how scientific, academic and novelistic discourse on the Orinoco has engendered a chronologically layered archive (a prime source of information for cultural elites) and a repository of images and impressions (its topos). At the same time, he considers how the rise of mercantilism and globalism has shaped the organization and distribution of both archive and topos.

Scarecrow Press, 2004.
ISBN: 9780810848313. 218 pp.
Illus.
Softcover. Very good.