The medieval imagination in cologne: the bestiário in Fernão Cardim

Abstract

This study is a critical analysis of aspects of the medieval imaginary, as far as
its bestiary is concerned, in Father Fernão Cardim´s accounts of colonial
Brazilian fauna. It examines that many of Cardim´s figuralizations of animal
reality are based on imaginative forms of representation which still bear the
influence of the medieval scholastic thinking. Advancing some argments, the
study points out that many other accounts of Brazilian reality in the colonial
period are indeed much indebted, and above all, to the traditional past and
mentality of their authors.