The path mishaps: analysis of the descriptions of hazards and difficulties during medieval travel in the fifteenth century

• Grant number: 14/27084-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: April 01, 2015
• End date: December 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Ancient and Medieval History
• Principal Investigator: Susani Silveira Lemos Franca
• Grantee: Waslan Sabóia Araújo
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais (FCHS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Franca. Franca , SP, Brazil

Abstract

In the fifteenth century, the spatial displacement increasingly frequent and writings that were born on travel to distant places began to have greater weight in the construction of knowledge about far away places than the writings that came from long, as the treaties and sums. The trip, because it contributed directly to the measurement of space, and the specification of things and people, is gradually recognized as a means to know the distance and distinguish it by itself. The iberians had a prominent role in the appreciation of knowledge through direct access on the space outside Europe, reason why the proposed research aims to encompass, this time, the movement conditions that were few and bad, an angle that is often overlooked in with regard to travel: the dangers and difficulties during the journey. In order to examine whether these had weight in the construction of travel reports and in the making of an image on the alien world, confront two relations trips, the Embajada à Tamorlán, written by Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, between 1403 and 1406, and the Andanças y viajes de Pero Tafur por diversas partes del mundo ávidos, reporting on his travels, made between 1435 and 1439. The goal is not exactly reflect the purpose of watching how other people, but about the difficulties they encountered to get advance to distant places.