Travel diaries as discourse: P. K. Page’s encounter with mid-twentienth century Brazil

Abstract

On a general level, travel diaries offer an important way to access the singularity of travellers’ subjective experience and their reaction to the new society in which they intend to live. However, viewed as discourse, travel diaries also represent a tool which reveals sociocultural aspects of the new society itself. This paper aims to discuss aspects associated to P. K. Page’s view of mid-nineteenth Century Brazil. Thus, important questions arise, such as: how did Page view the local habits and customs of the time? What was her relationship with the Portuguese language during her process of adaptation? What were her impressions about Rio de Janeiro’s daily life? What impact did the household management have in her travel experience? To this purpose, the paper adopts the idea of travel diaries as historically situated discourse, taking Page’s Brazilian Journal (1987) as material for analysis. Results indicate that, although Page sincerely loved Brazil, she also made important social criticism of the country, very often through irony in her descriptions of daily life and the Brazilian management of domestic life.