"Does every traveller see all that he describes?" The blind traveller James Holman and the limits of the traveller eye

Authors

  • Amilcar Torrão Filho

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2316-9141.rh.2016.115230

Keywords:

Travel literature, travelers, vision

Abstract

Ethnographic eye, picturesque eye, enlightened eye, evangelizer eye, imperialist eye: the eye is a frequent metaphor in the descriptions and analysis of travel literature in its various manifestations. See well results in a better understanding of the place visited, which can convert the traveler in a specialist of the visited place, someone who can write an authoritative text on a given space, propose political projects of regeneration, colonization, evangelization. The case of the blind British traveler, a former sailor, James Holman (1786-1857), sets certain limits to this epistemological claim that defines the genre. Author of several accounts of his circumnavigation trips to Russia, Central Europe, Brazil, China, Holman was aware of these limits and so, further than a blind traveler, was a blind writer. This paper deals with the process of this truthfulness construction and the consciousness of its limits. 

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Author Biography

  • Amilcar Torrão Filho

    Doutor em História pela Universidade Estadual de Campinas. Professor do Programa de Estudos Pós-graduados em História, da Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo. Líder de Grupo de Pesquisa CNPq, Núcleo de Estudos da Alteridade.

Published

2016-12-20

How to Cite

TORRÃO FILHO, Amilcar. "Does every traveller see all that he describes?" The blind traveller James Holman and the limits of the traveller eye. Revista de História, São Paulo, n. 175, p. 319–348, 2016. DOI: 10.11606/issn.2316-9141.rh.2016.115230. Disponível em: https://www.journals.usp.br/revhistoria/article/view/115230.. Acesso em: 13 may. 2024.