Narrando viagens e invenções. Hercule Florence: amigo das artes na periferia do capitalismo

The voluminous manuscript of 423 pages written between 1837 and 1859, by Antoine Hercule Romuald Florence (1804-1879), entitled L'ami des arts Livré à lui-même. Recherche et Découvertes sur différents sujets nouveaux, is a compilation of the main objects of study and reflection of this Franco-Monegasque settled in Brazil. In this article, L'ami des arts is understood as a starting point for a contextualization of the research that resulted in the invention of photographie by Florence, method of reproduction of texts and drawings announced in the Province of São Paulo in 1834. Then we read the report of the Langsdorff Expedition presented in the same manuscript as the starting point to establish a classification of other different versions written between 1828 e 1875. From the research into his active correspondence was still possible to recover the author's efforts to publish the well known narrative of the Voyage. In general, this article raises questions about the chronology of his inventions and his narrative versions of the Langsdorff expedition, showing the intersections between narrative inventions and the experience of the voyage in nineteenth century, enlightening the crossing set in autobiographical matrix.

Hercule Florence; Print Arts; Polygraphy; Photography; Langsdorff Expedition; 19th Century