Travel literature as a narrative refiguration of colonial overseas records

Abstract

In almost all authors who work with overseas history texts, there is an affinity to think of a type or group that brings these works together from labels such as ‘travel books’, ‘navigation poetry’, ‘itineraries’, ‘travel report, ‘nautical literature’ etc. With all this diversity of classifications, what is perceived is that the existence of a more concise proposal needs to be explored, promoting a denser study about the discursive and ideological conventions of each written source. So, in this article, we propose a short attempt to conceptually reorganize this historical-literary field of studies, paying particular attention to the refigurative precepts provided by Paul Ricoeur’s narratological studies.