Az Amazonastol az amazonokig. Egy „tokeletes utazas” visszhangjai
From the Amazon River to the Amazons. Echoes of a “perfect voyage”

Summary/Abstract: The ideal of the “perfect voyage” is one that keeps recurring in European thoughtsince antiquity. Thepaper fi rst review the manifestations of this ideal, then proposesa new approach for the examination of traditional sources (thus, for example,ars apodemica discourses) and proposes the utilization of new sources as fell(e.g. the registers of “ideal libraries”).One of the basic tenets of my analysis is that the expectations towards thistype of text – one which does not yield to inquiries easily and has been grapplingwith problems of (self-) defi nition throughout its history – are best raspedon the recipients’ size. Th erefore, it is from this aspect that we have approachedthe travelogue that had achieved, perhaps, the most unanimous success in 18thcentury France: the voyage of La Condamine along the Amazon River.During the analysis of this text and its reviews in the contemporary pressI have tried to answer the question how, almost uniquely the among traveloguewrites of the age, La Condamine had been able to meet the expectations of thestrictly scientifi c Journal des Savants, the scientifi c, but Jesuit Mémoires de Trévouxand the periodical representing a new, literary and subjective type of journalism,the Jugements sur quelques ouvrages modernes. One of the secrets of this successseems to be that the author consciously calculated with this target audiences:while he submitted a several hundred pages long treatise to the French Academyof Sciences, he provided the broader public with a shorter and lighter workthat included popular topics as well (such as that of the tribe of the Amazons).He was thus able to embody the “heroic traveler” risking his life as well as the“popular scientist” aware of his audiences’ expectations and able to present scientific results in a comprehensible way.

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