Hic sunt canibales: the cannibalism of the new world in the European imagination (1492-1729)

This article explores the role of cannibalism in the symbolic appropriation of the New World by European culture. The starting point is the rise of an image of the ultramarine possessions within a cosmological vision still based on the ancient zone theory and its main corollary, the existence of lands and peoples at the antipodes of the traditional ecoumene. The rich imagery that surrounds the habitant of the unknown beyond-as a result of cultural elaborations settled over more than a thousand years-becomes a matter of burning political topicality in the second half of the sixteenth century, when Portuguese and Spanish expeditions succeed to go beyond the limes of the ancients. The upturned medieval world becomes the mold for shaping the dichotomy between the Edenic Indian, precursor of the Noble Savage, and the anthropophagical Caribbean, emblem of the barbarism of the new colonial subject. Cannibalism has deep implications both in the perception of the other and of self, because it redefines the frontiers of what is human and what is not. A complex transition takes place, which will transform the medieval monster into the savage of modern colonial ideology.