« On s’accoutume à tout, même aux tremblements de terre. »

Abstract

Earthquakes are an essential commonplace in travel narratives to South America. At the beginning of the 18th century, several French travellers experienced South American earthquakes during their stay along the Andes. Writing the earthquake turns it sometimes into a daily and uneventful event, sometimes on the contrary into a catastrophe which presents a moving and pathetic display. The religious explanation of the natural phenomenon is not central in these travel narratives, which highlight the social dimension of the catastrophe and to propose scientific explanations of it. The way earthquakes are integrated into the narrative often shows that they are much less the result of a direct experience than a compilation of historical events, drawn from books or other eyewitnesses. The subject of earthquakes allows to question the travel narrative’s value of testimony as well as its rhetoric of verisimilitude.