A viagem entre o feitiço e a maldição

This contribution focuses on the multifaceted conceptualization of travel in Western cultural history. Several discourses will be addressed that, over time, have oscillated between the sceptical and restrictive on the one hand, and the truly admiring perspectives of the journey on the other. A number of visions of the phenomenon of travel under the binomial spell/curse will be analysed. The different contexts and historical factors that determined the value of travel will be exposed, from its great power of attraction to its restriction by inward looking religious and political systems.

Maria Ondina Braga: autobiografia, life-writing e relação

Travel, life and writing mix themselves when one speaks about Maria Ondina Braga, a Portuguese writer who has travelled the four continents as a tourist, traveler and emigrant. In several interviews, Maria Ondina Braga has declared “I write because this world that I lived in has revolutionized my soul so much that I had to tell it” and the title of her first book is, unsurprisingly, I came to see the land. This article aims to explore the writer’s encounter with the strangeness of the world, with the different landscapes and cultures and the diversity of people who inhabit it, but also the writer’s encounter with her own intimate landscape, in permanent change with travelling. From autobiography to life-writing, travel as an intimate experience of the world and encounter with identity and otherness are the condition of this writing.

Literatura de viagens e outras deslocações: deam- bulações reflexivas

Taking as a starting point the Granta magazine, we aim to address a set of subjects that seem to constantly follow the itinerary of travel literature in a transnational framework, seeking to contribute to remembering, within the academy space, issues and challenges that arise in this field and at the level production and reception.