“Land in sight”

The observed nature under the imagination

Abstract

We will demonstrate, in this article, that the tradition imaginary not only did not disappear completely in the primeval period of overseas navigations, but were, in part, responsible for new imaginary projections and new myths generated from an overseas look that is apparently rational, empirical and demystifying. To this end, we will not address any particular travel reports here, although we use some brief examples to support such an investigation, such as the reports of Cristobal Colón and Álvaro Velho. What is intended more precisely in this article is, in the wake of Serge Gruzinski, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Janice Theodoro da Silva, among other intellectuals, to explore and better understand the recent cultural historiography that addresses the transition from the wonderful medieval to the moment practical-descriptive intensified by overseas navigations problem, a transition that reveals not only the search for an experiential travel sense, but also the relationship of the navigator-narrator with his time and space, showing the empirical limitations of his gaze. Finally, we will analyze the traveling gaze of the initial overseas period as a look corresponding to the complex realism presented in the travel reports, in which the modalities of rhetoric, quantification and geography are gradually brought together with the traditional imaginary.