THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS ACCORDING TO PIGAFETTA皮加費塔心目中的菲律賓群島
The article argues that the European “discovery” of the Philippine archipelago must be understood less as a simple factual record and more as a textual production: a set of discursive strategies that converted unknown spaces into legible objects for European audiences. Taking Antonio Pigafetta's *Pr...
Saved in:
| Published in: | Review of Culture |
|---|---|
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Articles |
| Published: |
Instituto Cultural de Macau
January 2006
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.icm.gov.mo/rc/viewer/pdfViewerParts/40017/3775 |
| Summary: | The article argues that the European “discovery” of the Philippine archipelago must be understood less as a simple factual record and more as a textual production: a set of discursive strategies that converted unknown spaces into legible objects for European audiences. Taking Antonio Pigafetta's *Primo viaggio intorno al mondo* as its central source, the study examines how the navigational narrative, supported by allied devices such as maps, letters, and drawings, governed the way in which the islands were represented, revealed, and also deformed or omitted. Methodologically, the text is treated as a literary construction and historiographical archive, situated within the broader context of early exploration accounts and their rhetorical and intellectual exigencies. The article further traces the complex material trajectory of the manuscript and its multiple versions (Italian and French) and printed editions, assessing how these mediations impacted the reception of the Philippine section—approximately one-third of the entire account—which would function as the centerpiece of the “production” of the Philippines in the European imaginary. It concludes that Pigafetta not only transmitted data but mobilized conventions of knowledge and wonderment that reconfigured the region as a field of ethnographic and literary knowledge. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1682-1106 |