The common between worlds: European travelers first impressions of the African continent in fifteenth and sixteenth centuries

• Grant number: 17/10546-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: September 01, 2017
• End date: February 28, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Ancient and Medieval History
• Principal Investigator: Susani Silveira Lemos Franca
• Grantee: Paula Sposito Almeida
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais (FCHS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Franca. Franca , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 13/14786-6 - Writings on new worlds: a history of the construction of moral values in Portuguese, AP.TEM
• Associated scholarship(s): 17/27155-5 - The common between worlds: the first impressions of European travelers towards the African continent in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, BE.EP.MS

Abstract

Some of the conquers sent by Portugal in the first penetration travels in African, left to us some writings with their first impressions. These reports, destined to bring informations to Christian Kings, became also a guise to meanings the new worlds, on the one hand to emphazise the strangeness, on the other hand for highlight on features that they considered familiar, in other words, not about what properly distinguished them of the african people. In view of this, the proposal's project consist in examining in these reports the parameters that announced as common or familiar, namely, what was not surprising and was recogonized as usual by the european christians. This research is inserted in a bigger project, wich debriefs morality's standards, and due to this, our proposal is to question what was raised by the travelers mainly in relation to the feelings, the vestments, the feeding and the housing. To answer this question, will be put in dialogue specially the realm chronicles and the traveleres' reports, that is: Gomes Eanes Zurara's chronicles, Rui de Pina writings - written at expansion period -; Duarte Pacheco Pereira's reports and also the navigator's reports, such as Alvaro Velho, Alvise Cadamosto and Pêro de Sintra - portugueses travelers or foreigners bounded to Portugal. (AU)