The journey goes on: the rewritten memories of Vasco da Gama

Abstract

Along with the legendary and heroic figure of Vasco da Gama from traditional narratives and chronicles of Portuguese history, there are many other biographical and fictional versions of his “story”. In this article, we present some of these versions, which reflect particular historical tendencies in history throughout many centuries, and reveal a certain imaginary instability and political bias in the representation of heroes. By considering Vasco da Gama a thematic issue we will be able to read subsequent writing about his “life” as part of an imaginary and political development of historical methods.