Tensões entre realidade e ficção na narrativa de Auguste de Saint-Hilaire

Abstract

The theme that will be developed in the pages of this work is about the travel narrative of Auguste de Saint-Hilaire. The challenge of the concept that impels us to understand what a travel story is lies in a historical search based on the relationship between history and literature from the seven hundred. Over the centuries the concepts were defined and history became more and more scientific in character, although I share the idea that its dynamics lie in not being entirely a science. However, history and literature did not fail to share common points, that is, there is a link that unites them, which is the narrative or the act of narrating facts and events. Faced with such complexity, the task of conceptualizing travel reports falls on the contemporary reader, who, depending on the handling of the traveller's text, can transform it into a historical document or just a literary reading. In the midst of this process we also have the role of the narrator, the one who organizes, selects the events and elaborates his narrative. The field of narrative, however credible it may be, is also the field of fiction, and separating reality from fiction is the challenge proposed here. The method used to illuminate the paths followed by this research was the method of comparativism. Comparatism was also the method used by Saint-Hilaire when developing his narrative about the province of Goiás in the first half of the 19th century. Therefore, here we will analyze the influences and contexts in which they are linked to the formation of Saint-Hilaire as a naturalist scientist, and the tensions between the real and the fictional of his narrative.