Jesuit imagery in the contact zone: Jesuit texts on the indigenous flora and fauna of sixteenth century Brazil

Abstract

This article discusses several texts by the Jesuits among the fi rst wave that came to the Luso-American lands beginning in 1549. From the perspective of needing to understand the New World, while at the same time thinking of their own concerns, these Ignatians would produce, in the midst of a fruitful “contact zone", important reflections - which would become true founding literary discourses - about our Brazilian flora and fauna.