Do selvagem convertível

Abstract

The attitude of tolerance toward the native otherness and the representation of the Tupinamba "convertible" with docility found in Claude d'Abbeville's Histoire de la Mission... en l'isle de Maragnan (1614) are clearly tributary of Jean de Léry's Histoire d'un voyage fait en la terre du Brésil (1578). The capuchin paraphrases the huguenot in several passages, presenting the Indian as an object of "ethnographical" analysis, without excluding him - as Léry does - of the possibility of salvation. Thus, Claude d'Abbeville probably answers to the expectations of the French public in a context of exhortation of the colonisation of Maranhão and promotion of the apostolic work of the Capuchin Order.