The presence of the medieval imaginary in Colonial Brazil: the travelers' descriptions

Abstract

The study analyzes the inheritance of the medieval imaginary present in the literary registrations first European travelers that visited Brazil in the first centuries of the colonial time. The composition of the those travelers' descriptions reveals, from their journey literature, paintings and cartography, images that are typical of the cosmology of previous centuries. In their writings, as well as in the ichnographic representations that they used to make a description of the recently discovered territory, the fauna, the flora and its inhabitants are, potentially, serious candidates to partake in the category of the fantastic universe, so present in the literature and in the ichnography produced by the men of the Middle Ages. The idea may be found in travelers of the 16^th and 17^th centuries such as Fernão Cardim, Jean de Léry, Pero de Magalhães Gândavo and Gabriel Soares de Sousa.