Abstract
We next turn to Jean-Philippe Mathy's examination of rhetoric in the travel narratives of Cartier and Verazzano. Mathy attempts to illustrate the tension between the exhilaration and the anxiety created by the discovery of new and unheard of phenomena. In order to combat anxiety and insure the symbolic and material appropriation of new lands, texts employ scientific and rhetorical strategies to make the Other familiar and subsume the uncanny within categories of rational knowledge. The need to reassure the King that the new lands do not differ from Europe and a discourse of emerveillement color all encounters with the New World. These narratives of discovery thus present a mixture of fact and fiction, detailed ethnographic reporting and imaginary fantasies that fulfill a triple function: economic, political and ideological.
| Translated title of the contribution | To make the unheard of heard: Control and desertion in the first narratives of travel in America. |
|---|---|
| Original language | French |
| Pages (from-to) | 55-70 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Journal | Peuples Mediterraneens |
| Issue number | 78 |
| State | Published - 1997 |
| Externally published | Yes |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Geography, Planning and Development