Goa has been closely connected with the outside world for centuries now, but how do travellers to this place view Goa itself? To answer this question, researchers from the region looked at travel narratives dealing with Goa over the centuries.
In brief, their answer: quite a few see Goa through stereotypes and archetypes. But there have also been accounts going back literally hundreds of years which give an insight into lives lived here in remote times. Some 14 researchers had their papers published as a book titled 'Goa Through the Traveller's Lens'. It is edited by Dr Nina Caldeira, Professor and Head of Department of English, Goa University. Dr Isabel Santa Rita Vas looks at how Goa was a meeting point for ideas and writers, studying Portuguese researcher Anabela Mendes (who had a deep interest in the work of Garcia Da Orta), and Spanish scholar Jose Paz (who studied Rabindranath Tagore). Both came to Goa en route their intellectual journey. Dr Sushila Sawant Mendes looks at the research of Jewish anthropologist Robert S Newman, and how he understood the AVC (Assolna-Velim-Cuncolim) villages of Salcete in the 1980s. Her conclusion on the accuracy of Newman's work is interesting. Historian Xavier M Martins writes on 17th century maritime Goa, as viewed by Pyrard de Laval, while librarian-historian Maria de Lourdes Bravo da Costa looks at how French travellers Francois Pyrard de Laval and Rev Dennis L. Cottineau de Kloguen described the food habits of Goa of another century. Dr Prema Rocha (St Xavier's College) analyses the narratives of travellers depicted in the anthology '*Goa Travels*' edited by Manohar Shetty and ' *Inside/Out*' from the GoaWriters. She describes how British in the late 20th century Helene Derken-Menezes found her family in Goa. Sunita Mesquita sees Goa through the mirror of Sir Richard F. Burton, Maurice Collins, Luis Santa Rita Vas and others, while Dr Glenis Mendonca looks at the Goa depicted through recent travel blogs (expatblog.com, global-gallivanting.com, Goa Travel Blog, Hippie in Heels, among others). Dr Brian Mendonca tells the story of change in Goa through poetry, while Irene Silveira and Natasha Maria Gomes (both teaching French at the Goa University) undertake a detailed study the depiction of this small region in the podcasts of French journalist Anne Bonneau. Akshata Bhatt and Nafisa Oliveira study writings from Shetty's 'Goa Travels', Palia Gaonkar looks at Goa in Naipaul's 'A Million Mutinies Now', Ambika Kamat analyses Tome Pires' description of Goa in 'Suma Oriental', and Frederick Noronha gives an account of Goa's unusual rendering of Goa in the world of fiction. The 254-page book is based on papers presented at a seminar held in 2017, and was released last week at a seminar held by the Department of English, Goa University. ### -- _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ _/ _/ FN* फ्रेड्रिक नोरोन्या * فريدريك نورونيا +91-9822122436 _/ RADIO GOANA: https://archive.org/details/@fredericknoronha _/ _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ - *"Teaching peers is one of the best ways to develop mastery." - Jeff Atwood, Co-Founder of Stack Overflow *
