Book, Vision of Paradise[LS]

Examining a comprehensive period, which begins with the first contacts made by Portuguese and Spanish colonizers with the American continent, until the 16th century, Visão do Paraíso inaugurates the essay on the colonizer's imagination. The book, published for the first time in 1959, anticipated the historiography of mentalities by studying the Edenic myths that accompanied the narratives of the discoveries and colonization of America. At the time of its launch, the economic-social nature of the studies predominated, but Sérgio Buarque de Holanda recomposed the paradisiacal conception that the discoverers had of the New World, developing a long-term approach, the effects of which are still felt today. The dialogue established with European historiography, accompanied by a broad mastery of documentary sources that portray the idyllic visions of the American continent, allowed the author to make a particularly original comparison between the Portuguese and Spanish colonization of America. The author shows us how the descriptions of the New World produced by the Castilian conquerors are full of fantastic elements and faithfully correspond to Edenic themes, while, in the Portuguese case, Lusitanian pragmatism takes the place of creative imagination, granting visions of Paradise a limited space in Portuguese America. In the words of Sérgio Buarque: "the entire legendary world born in the Castilian conquests and which gives rise to eldorados, Amazons, silver mountains, magical lagoons, fountains of Juventa tends rather to thin out, become discolored or dim, as long as it is penetrates Portuguese America". This new edition features an image notebook with reproductions of documents and photographs from the author's personal collection, as well as unpublished afterwords by historians Laura de Mello e Souza and Ronaldo Vainfas.