A Cannibal Paradise. A Symbolic Cosmography of Mundus Novus

Paraíso caníbal. Cosmografía simbólica del mundus novus

Departing from the social representations theory, symbolic axes of Western European imaginaries are identified, which determined the interpretation and categorization of New Worlds during quest and conquest during the first half of the century from its ‘discovery’. During that period theological cosmogonies and symbolic and folkloric cosmographies informed specific projections whose binnacle allows to infer the identity taxonomies with which the ‘Mundus Novus’, the ‘terra incógnita’, was classified and assimilated, and thus how it became a space of resignification.