The saga of women in travel narratives

A significant portion of the accounts written by 16th-century travelers had no literary purpose, but constituted a source of research of great historiographical value and became an important resource in various fields: military, economic, religious, and ethnographic. The culture of the 1500s thus received valuable research material. However, the plurality of knowledge and interdisciplinary nature of these accounts meant that the subgenre of travel literature was slow to gain recognition. It is preferable to think of travel literature as a collection of texts that drew on travel for themes, motifs, and forms and which, taken as a whole, can be identified as an autonomous collection.

Autorentext
Professor of Portuguese Literature for 35 years at the Catholic University of Salvador, Bahia, with articles published in magazines and conference proceedings and participation in career promotion panels and others.