Investigação histórica do sufixo -eir- na nomeação de vegetais em língua portuguesa

A Historical Investigation of the Suffix -eir- for the Naming of Plants in the Portuguese Language. The Latin suffix -ari-, used as a creator of adjectives, developed several meanings during the period of spoken late Latin, as well as in the formation of the Romance languages. One of those meanings, present in the Portuguese suffix -eiro/ -eira, is associated with tree names, based on the name of the corresponding fruit. Quite productive in current modern Portuguese, that suffix was always linked to the denomination of plants in general, some of them not necessarily related to edible fruits or even to fruits. Similarities are found between the Portuguese derivations and other Romance languages. In this text, those similarities were investigated from a historical-comparative point of view. The high convergence in the western Romance languages can be motivated both by a common Latin heritage as by further loanwords, however during the European expansion in the sixteenth century, new plant names were known from the New World and their naming was based on words derived by the same suffix. Keywords: suffixation, Romance linguistics, botanical popular naming, historical morphology, morphological productivity.

Communicating an Empire and Its Many Worlds: Spanish American Mail, Logistics, and Postal Agents, 1492–1620

This article examines the principles underlying Spanish American mail during the government of the first Hapsburgs. I propose that this mail system, in which official and unofficial postal services coexisted, allowed for an intense communicational experience; rather than restricting correspondence, mail circulated at unprecedented levels. To understand this system's rationale I focus on the figure of the correos mayores, who were responsible for the distribution of official information (or information of interest to the crown) within certain Spanish American cities. Using sources in American and European archives, I question the premise that Spanish American communication was chaotic during this period. I also argue that the exceptional circulation of mail within Spanish America and overseas during the sixteenth century is essential for understanding European expansion and the early modern world.

Post-Enlightenment Exploration and the Aesthetic of Information: Curious with a Purpose

Exploration accounts written during the post-Enlightenment era of European expansion relied upon the agency of a romanticized narrator who could inspire a dedicated readership since he strategically projected the ‘performance’ of exploration as necessarily hazardous and hence, awe-inspiring. The concomitant element of romance was further emphasized in such texts since the precarious and vulnerable position of the explorer-narrator functioned as a much-needed foil to the sort of objectivist-detached discourse of functional intelligence that exploration narratives were increasingly expected to generate. The elaborate, methodical, organized and professional performance of overseas exploration needs to be understood as a targeted activity that utilized specific narratorial devices with an aim to make use of the widespread curiosity about the New World. This essay seeks to address the post-Enlightenment emergence of an ‘aesthetic of information’ along with its discursive trappings and epistemological frameworks which were ‘realized’ within a subculture of geographical exploration. ‘Knowledge’ aspired to be defined by empirical rigour, but the process of accessing and documenting it could scarcely avoid subjective variables.

Turquerie

Turquerie (often anglicized as “Turkery”) is a growing subject of interest within the humanities. It emerged in the 1990s at the crossroads of major trajectories of 18th-century studies, in line with the rise of visual studies and global art history. Originally it was largely a French school of thought. Turquerie, a French word, does not appear in the OED, unlike chinoiserie (also a French word). Le Littré defines it after Molière as a “Turkish-like behavior,” and the Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française as an “artistic or literary composition [produced in Europe] whose theme or picturesque details are borrowed from Turkish culture and oriental forms.” This heterogeneous body of forms, images, material culture, and attitudes has attracted compelling scholarship in the last twenty-five years grounded in a wider history of the shifting relationship between Europe and the Ottoman Empire. Early definitions of turquerie do not provide an exhaustive time frame. The earliest study by French diplomat Auguste Boppe, published in 1911 (see Boppe 1989 [cited under Surveys and Overviews]), focused primarily on the 18th century, the era of reciprocal diplomatic relations between France and the Ottoman Empire. Boppe was writing as a diplomat himself in Istanbul while the Ottoman Empire was still ongoing (albeit just). This is important to note because the subsequent scholarship, burdened by hindsight, often associates the rise in turquerie with the weakening and eventual demise of the Ottoman Empire in 1923. Boppe’s study provided a comprehensive taxonomy of the European gaze upon the Orient in the 18th century. Actual traveling artists and armchair orientalists formed the corpus of his paintings, filled with Turkish iconography, including images of Istanbul, turbaned figures, ladies of the harem etc. His emphasis on the 18th century also organically linked turquerie to the Enlightenment, thus foregrounding the topography of subsequent scholarship exploring European expansion, travel, diplomacy, and liberty in ideas and self-fashioning as well as of technological discoveries, which went hand in hand with an interest in, and a discursive instrumentalization of, the “Other.” This approach is both challenged and advocated by subsequent studies. Some scholars variously mark the beginning of turquerie with the fall of Constantinople in 1453, to draw attention to the longue durée historicity of Ottoman-European relations. Others, focusing on intensification of trade and mobility, date its origins to around the period of the failed Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683. While little consensus may exist as to when it all began, most art historical studies are still deeply indebted to Boppe’s writings. Yet, where to place the chronological curser has been important for questioning the role of France as the sole inventor of turquerie or for stressing the importance of including architecture and ephemera, such as pamphlets, popular entertainment, and warfare material, into its histories. These approaches effectively pluralized the subject of turqueries. Building on Boppe’s inaugural vision, the field of turquerie expanded beyond national and disciplinarian boundaries fueled by post-structuralism, new historicism, and cultural studies. Edward Said’s pioneering concept of orientalism (1978) reanimated the study of turquerie centered on issues of cross-cultural encounters and identity politics. On a thematic level the literature has been remarkably consistent on its main motifs: the harem, the despot, the turban, the tulip, the sofa etc. A move has been under way recently to open up this visual repertoire to the intrinsic fluidity of cultures and the dialectics of self and other.

“I Was Not Born to Obey, but Rather to Command”: The Self-Fashioning of Ṣägga Krǝstos, an Ethiopian Traveler in Seventeenth-Century Europe

In 1632, an Ethiopian traveler named Ṣägga Krǝstos arrived in Cairo and introduced himself to Franciscan missionaries as the legitimate heir to the Ethiopian throne. Following conversion to Catholicism, he embarked on an epic journey throughout the Italian peninsula and France, where he was hosted and supported by the Congregation of Propaganda Fide, multiple northern Italian rulers, and the French monarchy. By cross-referencing his autobiographical statement with a vast body of archival and published sources, this article shows that Ṣägga Krǝstos was an impostor, but also that, thanks to a favorable historical juncture and skilled self-fashioning, he was extensively supported by his European hosts. Ṣägga Krǝstos’s story of survival in the early modern Mediterranean dovetails with the literature on imposture, highlights the role that Africans played in the making of European expansion, and sheds further light on the condition of elite Africans in early modern Europe.

Conclusion: Failure and Scottish Colonialism

The present chapter examines why and how the concept of failure has become a prevalent narrative in discussions of Scotland's colonial schemes prior to 1707. It problematises the narrative of failure and argues that linking Scottish colonial activities between 1603 and 1707 to failure conveys an ambiguous message, which is poised between discharging Scotland from an active colonizing role prior to the Union of Parliaments and naturalizing the history of European expansion as an overall success story. A growing body of literature and historiography has questioned links between normative conceptions of success and colonialism, which this chapter uses to throw the concept of failure in Scottish colonial studies into stark relief. It seeks to open up a debate about diversifying conceptions of seventeenth-century Scottish colonialism and to address how dominant narratives of failure, benevolence, and singularity interact with contemporary debates on Scottish nationhood and postcolonialism.