Travel Knowledge examines European travel writing from 1500-1800, with an emphasis on travel to the East Indies, Africa, and the Levant. The importance of travel literature has grown in the humanities as scholars plumb such texts for their insights on colonialism, the other, and the nation, but this is one of the first volumes on European travel in the early modern period. The essays further distinguish themselves by focusing not on the European discovery of the Americas, but on voyages to the east, and by allowing the voices of marginalized travelers to speak through history. This collection includes both critical essays and the primary texts to which they refer, a unique pairing. Travel Knowledge is essential reading in history, literature, and ethnography.

About the Author(s)

By Ivo Kamps and Jyotsna Singh

Ivo Kamps is Associate Professor of English at the University of Mississippi. Jyotsna Singh is Associate Professor of English at Michigan State University.

Table of Contents

Introduction * Cultural Translation or Fact? The Ideological Formation of Edward Terry’s Voyage to East India —Jyotsna G. Singh * Trafficking with the Turks: English Travelers in the Ottoman Empire During the Early 17th Century—Daniel Vitkus * Back to the Future: Prophetic History in Camoes—Shankar Raman * Colonizing the Colonizer: A Dutchman in Asia Portuguesa—Ivo Kamps * Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters—Rebecca Chung * Shakespeare Circumnavigates Africa: 1607-1608—Gary Taylor * English Turks and Resistant Travelers: Conversion to Islam as Homosocial Courtship—Mary Fuller * Ottomanism Before Orientalism? Bishop King Praises Henry Blount, Passenger in the Levant—Gerald MacLean * Leo Africanus's Africa—Oumelbanine Zhiri