CompaRe | Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft
Refine
Year of publication
- 2002 (2) (remove)
Document Type
- Article (2) (remove)
Language
- German (2)
Has Fulltext
- yes (2)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (2)
Keywords
- Aufklärung (2) (remove)
Although the first travels to America were largely motivated by material interests, the news about native peoples published in Europe by the travellers little by little influenced a conception of the world, which was still dominated by medieval traditions. In general, the experience of the alien was still described in the forms of the own, but gradually the empirical knowledge began to structure a new discourse. The author analyses the earliest books on voyages to Brazil in the middle of the l6th century by Hans Staden, Jean de Léry and André Thevet. He observes how they develop discursive orders of their own, trying to deal with strange phenomena. They mark a first step for Western thought in the process of creating a space for the alien, who really exists – in this case on the coast of Brazil.
In the years between 1740 and 1850 the formula "Bestimmung des Menschen" (destiny of man) is used in 71 book titels, 35 of them alone in the 30 years around 1795. This study tries to determine the prototypical meaning of this for-mula as part of a title and to describe the typical expectations of a reader. Texts bearing a title including the formula are usually meant for an educated reader, but not for scholars. They treat the question, how the destiny of man can be de-termined by looking at his nature. The style of language used in the texts and also the related concepts which also can be found in the titles indicate that the topic is the most important one and stabilize an emotional aura surrounding the formula.