TRANSPOSITION OF FEMALE REPRESENTATIONS FROM THE OLD WORLD TO THE NEW WORLD

This article intends to perform an analysis related to the female representation in the first texts produced in American soil, in the period of the “discovery” of America and the first contact between cultures. The main texts of chroniclers approached are: Jean de Léry’s Viagem à Terra do Brasil, from 1578; Hans Staden’s Suas viagens e captiveiro entre os selvagens do Brasil, from 1557; João de Azpilcueta Navarro’s Cartas avulsas, from 1551; and Simão de Vasconcelos’, with Cronica da Companhia de Jesus do Estado de Brasil, from 1663. In this approach, our interest is to bring to memory the ways that the Europeans reacted when facing the existing cultural differences in the shock between the cultures, especially when facing the practice of cannibalism by the autochthonous people, and the way that the Europeans transmitted, through writing, these experiences to their compatriots. Highlighting specifically the way the women are presented in the reports at issue, bringing also a few illustrations, produced at the time of the first encounters, which allow the direct link of the autochthonous woman that practices the anthropophagic ritual with the figure of the witch that permeated the European popular imaginary of that time. Supporting the theoretical foundation of the proposed paper: Manuel Fernández Álvarez’s Casadas, monjas, rameras y brujas: la olvidada historia de la mujer española en el renacimiento (2002); Thomas Bonnici’s No limite da feminilidade: assassinas e bruxas – a mulher na sociedade inglesa dos séculos XVI e XVII (2003); e Kramer e Sprenger’s O Martelo das Feiticeiras (1486).