The Mundurukus. Thomas Mayne Reid and travel narratives in Italy at the end of the 19th century

Abstract

This text is the paratext of the translation of an article about the Mundurukus by Thomas Mayne Reid, published in 1881 in the Giornale Illustrato dei Viaggi e delle Avventure di Terra e di Mare, in
Milan. Mayne Reid’s article briefly presents traditions and characteristics of the Mundurukus, looked at with the usual eucentrism of the time, and stands as a great example of travel narratives in popular publications of the time. The relevance of Mayne Reid’s text is due to the presentation of various aspects of the Mundurukus ethnic group at the time (some of their traditions are still alive today), the effort to summarize for a non-specialist public, generally young people, the author’s observations or relatively reliable texts read by him, the notable influence he exerted on other authors of the same genre in Italy. At the same time, it cannot be denied that Mayne Reid’s perspective, which expresses the usual notion of European ethnocentrism towards the Amazon, in this case does not give excessive emphasis to economic aspects and its interest in terms of colonial expansion, but seems more curious about something so distant and, for the author, often almost incomprehensible.