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French

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10670/1.wtiuu1

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André Thevet and Jean de Léry: involuntary testimony and profession of historian in two journey stories in Antarctic France

Abstract

International audience There are two existing narratives of the first, unsuccessful, attempt by the French Crown to establish a colony, under the name of France Antarctique, in the Bay of Guanabara towards 1555: the Singularitez de la France Antarctique written and published by Capuchin priest André Thevet in 1558, and L'Histoire d'un voyage fait en la terre du Brésil, written by Huguenot Jean de Léry and first published in 1578. Though the two texts opposed each other, both narrated the authors' first impressions on foreign lands, what they both saw and above all, the impressions caused by those they shared a brief period of their existence with. However, if what is dear to the historian, as Marc Bloch once said, is the involuntary testimony hidden within the text, these travel narratives become particularly important not only to understand the first impressions caused by the discovery of a new world and its inhabitants, but also the complex debates and networks of power developed in a country which, towards the mid-XVIth century, was under the unavoidable impact of the so-called wars of religion.

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