Research program
European culture and the problem of otherness: historiography, politics, science of man in modern Europe (XVI-XIX centuries)
University Co-ordinator
Università di PISA -
LINGUE E LETTERATURE ROMANZE - PISA(PI)
Research Unit Leader
Gianluigi GOGGI
Description
This research unit's intention is to analyse travel books and historical-geographical treatises in accordance with criteria emerging from recent contributions such as Ch. Marouby's essay (1990) and S. Linon-Chipon's voluminous "thèse" (2003). However different the approach and the methodology may be, it is useful to analyse how these works deal with various aspects of travel literature and historical-geographical literature about "different" countries from the 16th to the 19th centuries in France.I. "Le monde par deçà et le monde par delà" – Since Amerigo Vespucci's Mundus Novus, descriptions of the New World (and in particular of Brasil) characterise the new continent as totally "different". It is a both a physical-geographical difference (with its fabulous or monstrous features) and a social and human one (with its strange usages and habits: anthropophagy or cannibalism, "atheism", etc.). The iconography which accompanies the descriptions underlines the exceptional character of the New World and especially that of Brazil, from a German wood-engraving of 1505 (with a caption extracted from a passage of Vespucci's Mundus Novus) representing for the first time South American Indians (cfr. W. C. Sturtevant, "First Visual Images of Native America", First Images of America. The Impact of the New World on the Old, ed. by F. Chiappelli, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, University of California Press, 1976, t. I, p. 417-454).Vespucci's scrutiny of the New World reflects the perspective of the European starting-point: from this point of view, the New World implies a series of negations or reversals of every fundamental European institution: absence of political power, absence of laws and rules, absence of private property, absence of alimentary taboos (taboo of human flesh). It is an extremely significant example of the "rhétorique de la négativité" (Marouby) which is the foundation of primitivism and concentrates the "ethnological" knowledge of much sixteenth-eighteenth century travel literature: the "different" world is then a world turned upside down or far removed from the starting-point. The observer of this upside-down world has an ambivalent attitude: on the one side, the novelty is alarming and sinister (it represents nightmare scenarios) while on the other it has some features resembling Eden or paradise.The same ambivalent description appears, mutatis mutandis, in French texts of the second half of the 16th century. These texts, known as corpus huguenot relatif à l'Amérique (M. Bataillon), have been fundamental in defining the image of the Brasilian "savage" and more generally that of the American "savage". Most of the authors were Protestant and their religious faith is extremely significant in guiding their attitude towards the world of "savages" (Lestringant). Amongst these books, there is Jean de Léry's travel book (Histoire d'un voyage fait en la terre du Brésil, 1578) and the collection of travels begun by Théodore de Bry at the end of 16th century and continued by his sons: it was published in Frankfurt, Germany, with a rich iconographical apparatus. Two of Montaigne's well-known essays, Des Cannibales (1580) and Des Coches (1585) quite resemble this German corpus.The intention is to have a thorough view on the imagery of Brasil as it is represented in recent contributions and in particular in G. Goggi's Le Brésil entre rêve et réalité dans la littérature de voyages et dans les compilations du XVIIIe siècle, presented at the round table on The Perception of ther Colonial World in Eighteenth-Century Encyclopedias and Compilations (coordinated by Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink and Clorinda Donato) at the 11th International Conference on the Enlightment (Los Angeles, 3th-10th of August 2003). Special attention will be paid to the dichotomous organisation of geographical space in a world "par-deçà" (Europe) and a world "par-delà" (the New World), a dichotomy which will influence the whole vision of American societies and will persist until the 18th century. Other works which will be carefully considered are La Popelinière's (Lancelot, Voisin de) Les Trois Mondes (1582) and Jean de Laet's Histoire du Nouveau Monde ou Description des Indes Occidentales (1640; first Dutch edition of 1625). They play a very important role in the debate on the New World: the former was soon forgetten while the latter remained a fundamental reference during the 18th century.The research in this direction is partially finalised to the preparation of commentary on book IX of Raynal's Histoire des deux Indes whose G. Goggi is the responsible. The edition of complete Raynal's work is going to be published by the Voltaire Foundation of Oxford.It is our intention to organise a conference on the experiences of French travellers in South America between the 16th and the 18th century, taking as the starting-point Raynal's Histoire des Deux Indes (Léry, Thevet, Corréal, La Condamine). II. The dispute over the New World – The dichotomic organisation of the geographical space opposing the New World to the Old is an essential aspect of the European vision of America. The trend is to "reduce" the difference of the new continent (in particular socio-anthropological one) by assimilating the newly discovered American societies to ancient societies (Greek, Roman and others). The ethnological comparativism which derives from this attitude will be widely applied in the Eighteenth century: there are not only Lafitau's works but also works by Scottish Enlightenment authors or by Démeunier. Notwithstanding these attempts of "reduction" the dichotomy remains clear and it underlies the "dispute over the New World" studied in A. Gerbi's work (for French aspects of the dispute, see also the recent work by Ph. Roger).This research, which will have as its bases G. Goggi's former studies, will be focused on Voltaire's Essai sur les moeurs and Raynal's Histoire des deux Indes in order to deepen the analysis on the dispute (see G Goggi's article "Amériques" in the Dictionnaire général de Voltaire, Paris, Champion, 2003). Dr Mireille Gille will be involved in this research as well: she will study books VI and XVII of the Histoire des deux Indes, investigating mainly on its lexicon and on lexical adaptation to the new discovery. Dr Gille will also examine Butel-Dumont's work on English colonies of North America (1775) with the aim of studying the origins of Raynal's books XV-XVIII. Dr Norina Fornasier will be involved in the analysis of F.-J. de Chastellux's Voyages dans l'Amérique septentrionale, which are an exceptional documentation on the birth of the United States of America; she will also deeply study Chateaubriand's American experience as it is witnessed in his books (Atala and Réné). This kind of research has as final aim the critical edition of books XV-XIX of Raynal's work, which is going to be prepared by the Oxford Voltaire Foundation under the responsibility of G. Goggi. Dr Gille's research on the lexicon of the Histoire des deux Indes falls within this editorial project.A workshop on the most peculiar topics of the dispute over the New World is going to be organised: it will be focused on Voltaire's pages on ameica and on volumes XV-XVIII of the Histoire des deux Indes.III. Voyage to Italy – The third part of this research will concentrate on how the experience of foreign travelers (especially French) to Italy between the end of the Eighteenth century and the first decades of the Nineteenth, contributed to create figures and images of the "other". Special attention will be paid to the birth of the myth of Italy and Italian in the above mentioned lapse of time, since A. Radcliffe's novels (soon widely spread thanks to Morellet's translation) or M.me de Staël's pages of Corinne, to Stendhal's various works dedicated to Italy.Dr Mireille Gille will start from her former studies for dealing in particular with relations on travels to Italy of the second half of the Eighteenth century: among these, President Dupaty's Lettres sur l'Italie (1785) of which she will do the critical edition and present the first Italian translation. As a matter of fact, this work dues its fame to the numerous reprints of the XIX century but also to its translation in several languages. The Voyage en Italie et en Sicilie fait en 1801 et 1802 by Creuzé de Lesser will be analysed as well in this research.Dr Fornasier will focus her attention on Stendhal's works about Italy (Rome Naples et Florence but also Promenade dans Rome and Chroniques Italiennes). Furthermore, she will study Th. Gautier's Voyage en Italie (1875). A round table concentrating on the main themes emerging from these texts will be organised.IV. Voyage to Russia – A survey on some French travelers to Russia will constitute the last part of these researches on travel literature. Diderot's voyage to Russia (studied by G. Goggi) will be the starting point and then the historical works on the tsar empire written by French people (N.G. Clerc, P.-Ch. Lévesque) who lived for a long time in Russia during Catherine II's period will be taken into account. The focus will anyway be on two voyagers who contributed to deeply change the image of Russia in mid-Nineteenth century: 1) Astolphe Marquis de Custine, La Russie en 1839, Paris, Amyot, 1843, 4 volumes; 2) Th. De Gautier, Voyage en Russie (1867).Dr Fornasier will focus her attention on these two last authors.Nadia Mansouri, French lecturer at the Faculty of Languages and Foreign Literatures of the University of Pisa, will collaborate to this research: she will work on the "Lexique" of the Histoire des deux Indes and will provide the essential linguistic support.
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