A produção da verdade narrativa nos diários da descoberta da América e no relato das aventuras de Dom Quixote de La Mancha

Abstract

The search for truth is an ever present idea in western civilization However, it hasn’t always been so – it emerges in a specific period of time, when certain ways of searching for truth are left behind, and the construction of truth becomes imperative. Th is article aims at one of many routes established by western narratives – travel narratives – working with the changes in discourse during the Age of Exploration. One journey refers to Diários da Descoberta da América, by Christopher Columbus, written in a time of establishment and delimitation of space-time frontiers: geographical, political, economical, cultural, physical and spiritual frontiers. As a counterpoint, another journey, the adventures of the Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha, written in a period when the unknown universe unfolds itself into a world of signs and traces. Diff erent strategies in the construction of truth are undertaken in these two periods, when the world reconfi gures itself as an infi nite space where knowledge is possible, opposed to the limited space of the medieval world, headed by an immense unintelligible power.