A presente dissertação tem como objetivo a análise do Tratado das Coisas da China (1570) de Frei Gaspar da Cruz, visando compreender a inserção desta literatura de viagem no processo de mundialização do século XVI, levado a cabo pelas naus da expansão ibérica, sobretudo portuguesa. A partir desta obra, pretende-se espelhar o processo de relações estabelecido entre portugueses e chineses, tomando a narrativa como registro histórico que constrói a imagem da China no século XVI. / This study encompasses the analysis of the book Tratado das Coisas da China by Friar Gaspar da Cruz, as an attempt to understand the addition of travel literature in the 16th century\'s mundialization process, which was undertaken by the Iberian maritime exploration led by Portugal during the Age of Discovery. Taking Gaspar da Cruz\'s work as basis, the study aims to mirror the Portuguese-Chinese relations established at the time, understanding travel narrative as a historical record that substantiates such relations, providing for an intercultural process with interlaced views.

A presente dissertação tem como objetivo a análise do Tratado das Coisas da China (1570) de Frei Gaspar da Cruz, visando compreender a inserção desta literatura de viagem no processo de mundialização do século XVI, levado a cabo pelas naus da expansão ibérica, sobretudo portuguesa. A partir desta obra, pretende-se espelhar o processo de relações estabelecido entre portugueses e chineses, tomando a narrativa como registro histórico que constrói a imagem da China no século XVI. / This study encompasses the analysis of the book Tratado das Coisas da China by Friar Gaspar da Cruz, as an attempt to understand the addition of travel literature in the 16th century\'s mundialization process, which was undertaken by the Iberian maritime exploration led by Portugal during the Age of Discovery. Taking Gaspar da Cruz\'s work as basis, the study aims to mirror the Portuguese-Chinese relations established at the time, understanding travel narrative as a historical record that substantiates such relations, providing for an intercultural process with interlaced views.

This dissertation is rooted in one general question: what can the wood from ships reveal about the people and cultures who built them? Shipwrecks are only the last chapter of a complex story, and while the last fifty years of nautical archaeology have managed to rewrite a number of these chapters, much of the information unrelated to a ship’s final voyage remains a mystery. However, portions of that mystery can be exposed by an examination of the timbers. An approach for the cultural investigation of ship timbers is presented and attempts are made to establish the most reliable information possible from the largely unheralded treasures of underwater excavations: timbers. By introducing the written record, iconographic record, and the social, economic, and political factors to the archaeological record a more complete analysis of the cultural implications of ship and boat timbers is possible. I test the effectiveness of the approach in three varied casestudies to demonstrate its limits and usefulness: ancient Egypt’s Middle Kingdom, the Mediterranean under Athenian influence, and Portugal and the Iberian Peninsula during the Discoveries. The results of these studies demonstrate how ship timbers can be studied in order to better understand the people who built the vessels.

The diploma thesis deals with the issue of representations of Native Americans in Czech written sources from the 16th century which are related to the topic of european overseas exploration. Special emphasis is placed on the formation of representations of corporeality in the context of discourses present in the early modern literary production and on the representations of gender relations that discourses of the body help to produce in texts. Apart from other things, the textual representations were influenced by the europocentric interpretation of the world which emerging from christian discourse at that time. As well, the work shows how the practices of othering of American Indians and their societies are produced in analyzed sources. The othering was realized, beside other things, in the context of dichotomous discourses of civilization and barbarism, religious discourse and the discourse of power. Emphasis is also put on the changes and mutual similarities of discourses in the written sources. In order to analyze representations of American Indians, the work uses the method of Foucalt's discursive analysis. The work also uses the constructivist theory of representation and the theory of hegemonic gender configurations. Key words Native Americans, corporeality, gender, otherness, textual...

Les Grandes Découvertes portugaises furent une étape fondamentale dans la rencontre entre Occident et Orient. Bien que l'Orient ne fût pas un territoire totalement inconnu des Européens, la distance et les difficultés que rencontraient les voyageurs occidentaux qui se rendaient en Orient à l'époque médiévale, faisaient des informations qu'ils transmettaient des denrées presque aussi rares et précieuses que les épices ou les étoffes pour lesquelles ils empruntaient la fameuse route de la soie. Le succès retentissant qu'a connu le récit de l'illustre explorateur italien Marco Polo témoigne de l'intérêt que l'Orient suscitait à cette époque. Ce récit marqua les esprits et continua de distiller merveilles et mythes dans l'imaginaire européen jusqu'au début du XVI° siècle. Aussi avant le premier voyage de Vasco de Gama (1497-1498) et malgré les échanges commerciaux de la route de la soie, la connaissance de l'Orient restait très approximative, voire parfois fantaisiste. À la suite de la découverte du chemin maritime vers les Indes, la rencontre des Portugais avec l'Orient permit d'actualiser cette connaissance. Les voyageurs portugais offrirent aux Européens des récits qui rompirent avec la tradition livresque médiévale, en reportant des observations faites in loco et donc plus proches de la réalité orientale. Mais bien que ces voyageurs aient contribué à la démythification de certains mythes associés à l'Orient, l'image de l'Orient que leurs récits transmettaient à leur tour, continua d'être régie par les lois de l'imaginaire. Notre thèse porte sur l'image renaissante de l'Orient et constitue une étude des images et symboles qui furent associés à l'Orient dans cinq récits de voyages portugais du XVI°. Afin de dégager les permanences et les évolutions de cette image, nous nous intéresserons dans un premier temps à l'image de l'Orient de l’Antiquité au Moyen Age, à travers toutes les informations qui circulaient sur ce dernier, de la littérature latine aux récits de voyageurs tels que Marco Polo et Jean de Mandeville, en passant par les débuts de la cartographie. Puis nous nous intéresserons à l'image renaissante de l'Orient à travers l'étude d'un corpus de cinq récits de voyages portugais que nous considérons représentatifs des différents aspects de cette nouvelle vision mythique de l'Orient et qui sont les suivants: Peregrinação de Fernão Mendes Pinto, Algumas coisas sabidas da China de Galiote Pereira, Tratado das Coisas da China de Gaspar da Cruz, Verdadeira Informação das terras do Preste João das Índias de Francisco Álvares et le Livro do Oriente de Duarte Barbosa. / The Portuguese discoveries were an essential step in the meeting between the West and the East. Although the East wasn’t a land completely unknown by the Europeans, the distance and the difficulties that the western travellers who were going to the East during Middle Ages had to face with, made the informations they transmitted goods almost as rare and precious than the spices or fabrics for which they had taken the famous silk road. The significant success of the relation of the renowned Italian explorer Marco Polo demonstrates the interest that the East provoked in these times. This account left a deep impression and continued to spread marvels and myths in the European imagination until the early XVIth century. Before the first travel of Vasco da Gama (1497-1498) and despite the trade of the Silk Road, the knowledge of the East remained approximate, indeed sometimes fanciful. After the discovery of the sea route to the Indies, the meeting of the Portuguese with the East permitted to update this knowledge. The Portuguese travellers offered to the Europeans, accounts that broke with the medieval tradition, reporting observations made in loco and as a consequence closer to the eastern reality. But although these travellers contributed to the demystification of some myths linked to the East, the image of the East they transmitted continued to be ruled by the laws of imagination. Our tesis will talk about the Renaissance’s image of the East and constitute a study of the images and symbols that were associated to the East by five Portuguese travel accounts of the XVIth century. So as to determinate the permanences and the evolutions of this image, we will at first talk about the image of the East from Antiquity to Middle Ages. Then we will talk about the Renaissance’s image of the East by studying five Portuguese travel accounts that we consider representative of different aspects of this new mythical image of the East. This accounts being Peregrinação of Fernão Mendes Pinto, Algumas coisas sabidas da China of Galiote Pereira, the Tratado das Coisas da China of Gaspar da Cruz, the Verdadeira Informação das terras do Preste João das Índias of Francisco Álvares and the Livro do Oriente of Duarte Barbosa.