For a figurative interpretation of the Histoire d’un voyage faict en la terre du Bresil, by Jean de Léry

Abstract

This article examines how the concept of figura, as developed by the German philologist Erich Auerbach, can lead to an understanding of the dialectical contradictions present in the stylistic and compositional constructions of the Histoire d’un voyage faict en la terre du Brésil, by Jean de Léry. We argue that most studies concerning this work focus on the elements of a new reality (the New World, the Indigenous peoples and their culture, the exuberant aspects of nature, etc.), without considering that the reconstruction of the figurae may conceal one of the poles of a dialectical relation: a religious, European vision based on the Holy Scriptures, a method of understanding called by Auerbach intellectus spiritualis, which is nothing other than an exegesis between the text and its broader historical context. In order to establish relationships between formal and contextual aspects (the decline of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the beginning of Modernity), this article observes and evaluates the possible contributions of a figurative interpretation to the study of a sixteenth-century literary work.