View preparations: readings on foreign lands in travel reports of Latin American people to Europe and the United States in the 19th century

• Grant number: 15/22658-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: February 01, 2016
• End date: January 31, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of America
• Principal Investigator: Stella Maris Scatena Franco
• Grantee: Graziela Mazzeo Madeira
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project aims to analyze the readings made by the Latin American travelers during their journeys to Europe and the United States during the nineteenth century. These readings are referenced in the very same travel reports written by authors from different countries like Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. The main purpose of this project is, first, to survey the works mentioned by the travelers and check which are the most read texts on the countries visited. Subsequent to this stage, we intend to investigate whether such texts have urged Latin Americans to know different places, and if travelers from Latin America, knowing the places described in the books, accepted or denied the images projected in the works they had read. This work aims to contribute to understand the particular forms of understanding the European and North American reality by the Latin American travelers, who generally had an education based in European literature, but not necessarily accepted uncritically everything that they had apprehended in these works.