Abstract
Ethnographic eye, picturesque eye, enlightened eye, evangelizer eye, imperialist eye: the eye is a frequent metaphor in the descriptions and analysis of travel literature in its various manifestations. See well results in a better understanding of the place visited, which can convert the traveler in a specialist of the visited place, someone who can write an authoritative text on a given space, propose political projects of regeneration, colonization, evangelization. The case of the blind British traveler, a former sailor, James Holman (1786-1857), sets certain limits to this epistemological claim that defines the genre. Author of several accounts of his circumnavigation trips to Russia, Central Europe, Brazil, China, Holman was aware of these limits and so, further than a blind traveler, was a blind writer. This paper deals with the process of this truthfulness construction and the consciousness of its limits.
Keywords
Travel literature; travelers; vision