Hans Staden and the Cultural Politics of Cannibalism Available to Purchase

Hans Staden’s Warhaftige historia und beschreibung eyner landtschafft der wilden, nacketen, grimmigen menschfresser leuthen in der Newenwelt America gelege is a fundamental text in the history of the discovery of Brazil.¹ In fact, it is the earliest account we have of the Tupi Indians from an eyewitness who was captive among them for over nine months, and a key reference in the resurgent debate on cannibalism and its discourses—a debate that partly has its origins in the speculations of Michel de Montaigne, who also conversed with Tupi people who were brought as living exhibits to France. Despite this intellectual genealogy, there has not been an English-language edition since 1929, and no translation into modern German since 1942. Neither has there been a critical introduction that brings ethnographic experience of ritual anthropophagy to the task of interpretation, using other anthropological research on anthropophagic discourse, or literary criticism of the cannibal...