' is a travelogue published in 1611 by Thomas Coryat (sometimes also spelled "Coryate" or "Coriat") of Odcombe, an English traveller and mild eccentric.

History

The book is an account of a journey undertaken, much of it on foot, in 1608 through France, Italy, Germany, and other European countries. Coryat conceived of the 1,975-mile (3,175 km) voyage to

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...

and back in order to write the subsequent travelogue dedicated to Henry, Prince of Wales, at whose court he was regarded as somewhat of a buffoon and jester, rather than the

wit Wit is a form of intelligent humour, the ability to say or write things that are clever and usually funny. Someone witty is a person who is skilled at making clever and funny remarks. Forms of wit include the quip, repartee, and wisecrack. Form ...

and intellectual he considered himself. The extent to which Coryat invited such ridicule in pursuit of patronage and court favour is unclear. The year 1608, when Coryat made his journey, was a period of relative peace in France following the end of both the

French Wars of Religion The French Wars of Religion is the term which is used in reference to a period of civil war between French Catholics and Protestants, commonly called Huguenots, which lasted from 1562 to 1598. According to estimates, between two and four mil ...

(1562–1598), and the Franco-Spanish War (1595–1598) in northern France. Coryat's anecdotes of how the Spanish took Calais in 1596, and Amiens with a bag of walnuts in 1597, were recent events in 1608. Among other things, Coryat's book introduced the use of the fork to England and, in its support of continental travel, helped to popularize the idea of the

Grand Tour The Grand Tour was the principally 17th- to early 19th-century custom of a traditional trip through Europe, with Italy as a key destination, undertaken by upper-class young European men of sufficient means and rank (typically accompanied by a tu ...

that rose in popularity later in the century. The book also included what is likely the earliest English rendering of the legend of

William Tell William Tell (german: Wilhelm Tell, ; french: Guillaume Tell; it, Guglielmo Tell; rm, Guglielm Tell) is a folk hero of Switzerland. According to the legend, Tell was an expert mountain climber and marksman with a crossbow who assassinated Albr ...

. The work is particularly important to music historians for giving extraordinary details of the activities of the Venetian School, one of the most famous and progressive contemporary musical movements in Europe. The work includes an elaborate description of the festivities at the church of San Rocco in

, with polychoral and instrumental music by Giovanni Gabrieli,

Bartolomeo Barbarino Bartolomeo Barbarino (known as "il Pesarino") (c. 1568c. 1617 or later) was an Italian composer and singer of the early Baroque era. He was a virtuoso falsettist, and one of the most enthusiastic composers of the new style of monody. Life Nothi ...

, and others. The book appeared with engravings by William Hole, and the author received a pension. ''Crudities'' was only twice reprinted at the time, so the first edition is quite rare today. Later, "modern" facsimiles were put out, in 1776 and 1905, which included the later trip to Persia & India.

"Commendatory" verses

A custom of

Renaissance humanist Renaissance humanism was a revival in the study of classical antiquity, at first Italian Renaissance, in Italy and then spreading across Western Europe in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. During the period, the term ''humanist'' ( it, umanista ...

s was to contribute commendatory verses that would preface the works of their friends. In the case of this book, a playful inversion of this habit led to a poetic collection that firstly refused to take the author seriously; and then took on a life of its own. Prince Henry as Coryat's patron controlled the situation; and willy-nilly Coryat had to accept the publication with his book of some crudely or ingeniously false panegyrics from 55 contemporary wits and poets of his acquaintance, including

John Donne John Donne ( ; 22 January 1572 – 31 March 1631) was an English poet, scholar, soldier and secretary born into a recusant family, who later became a cleric in the Church of England. Under royal patronage, he was made Dean of St Paul's Cathedr ...

Ben Jonson Benjamin "Ben" Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637) was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for ...

Inigo Jones Inigo Jones (; 15 July 1573 – 21 June 1652) was the first significant Architecture of England, architect in England and Wales in the Early modern Europe, early modern period, and the first to employ Vitruvius, Vitruvian rules of proportion an ...

, and Thomas Roe. Further, the book was loaded with another work, Henry Peacham's ''Sights and Exhibitions of England'', complete with a description of a perpetual motion machine by Cornelis Drebbel. There were poems in seven languages. Donne wrote in an English/French/Italian/Latin/Spanish

macaronic language Macaronic language uses a mixture of languages, particularly bilingual puns or situations in which the languages are otherwise used in the same context (rather than simply discrete segments of a text being in different languages). Hybrid words ...

. Peacham's was in what he called "Utopian", which was partly

gibberish Gibberish, also called jibber-jabber or gobbledygook, is speech that is (or appears to be) nonsense. It may include speech sounds that are not actual words, pseudowords, or language games and specialized jargon that seems nonsensical to ou ...

, and the pseudonymous Glareanus Vadianus (tentatively John Sanford) wrote something close to literary nonsense. The contribution of John Hoskyns is called by Noel Malcolm "the first specimen of full-blown literary English nonsense poetry in the seventeenth century". In the same year that the book was published, a pirate version of the verses appeared, published by Thomas Thorpe, under the title ''The Odcombian Banquet'' (1611).

Modern analogues

British travel writer and humourist Tim Moore retraced the steps of Coryat's tour of Europe, as recounted in his book ''Continental Drifter''.

Notes

References

* {{cite book , last=Coryat , first=Thomas , author-link=Thomas Coryat , year=1611 , title=Coryat's Crudities , location=London , publisher=W.S. (William Stansby)

External links