Archives > Volume 7 (2009) > Barletta

Masochistic Ritual and Rebirth in Fernão Mendes Pinto’s Peregrinação

Vincent Barletta

Abstract

The present study examines the ontogenetically productive role of humiliation and violence within Fernão Mendes Pinto’s (1509?-1583) Peregrinação, a canonical work of the Portuguese Renaissance. Explicitly adapting Gilles Deleuze’s reading of the work of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (Coldness and Cruelty) to the Peregrinação, this study engages in a focused analysis of masochistic rituals encoded within Mendes Pinto’s narrative. Focusing on two specific episodes in the text, both of them ritual murders – one carried out by Portuguese captains in the Red Sea and another by Southeast Asians in the Kingdom of Pegu – this study explores the ways in which the Peregrinação employs the logic of the masochistic contract, and the rituals that sustain it, in strategic ways.

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