Epitomes of Dacia: Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania in Early Modern English Travelogues

Monica Matei-Chesnoiu

doi:10.18778/2083-8530.25.10

Authors

Monica Matei-Chesnoiu Ovidius University of Constanta, Romania https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9192-5513

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.25.10

Crossmark check for up

Keywords:

early modern English geography, 'The Merchant of Venice', 'Othello', 'Pericles', Shakespeare, travelogues

Abstract

This essay examines the kaleidoscopic and abridged perspectives on three early modern principalities (Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania), whose lands are now part of modern-day Romania. I examine travelogues and geography texts describing these Eastern European territories written by Marco Polo (1579), Abraham Ortelius (1601; 1608), Nicolas de Nicolay (1585), Johannes Boemus (1611), Pierre d’Avity (1615), Francisco Guicciardini (1595), George Abbot (1599), Uberto Foglietta (1600), William Biddulph (1609), Richard Hakluyt (1599-1600), Fynes Moryson (1617), and Sir Henry Blount (1636), published in England in the period 1579-1636. The essay also offers brief incursions into the representations of these geographic spaces in a number of Shakespearean plays, such as The Merchant of Venice and Othello, as well as in Pericles, Prince of Tyre by Shakespeare and Wilkins. I argue that these Eastern European locations configure an erratic spatiality that conflates ancient place names with early modern ones, as they reconstruct a space-time continuum that is neither real nor totally imaginary. These territories represent real-and-fictional locations, shaping an ever-changing world of spatial networks reconstructed out of fragments of cultural geographic and ethnographic data. The travel and geographic narratives are marked by a particular kind of literariness, suggesting dissension, confusion, and political uncertainty to the early modern English imagination.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Monica Matei-Chesnoiu, Ovidius University of Constanta, Romania

Monica Matei-Chesnoiu, PhD, DLitt, is Professor Emerita of Ovidius University of Constanta (Romania). She is the author of Geoparsing Early Modern English Drama (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), Re-imagining Western European Geography in English Renaissance Drama (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), Early Modern Drama and the Eastern European Elsewhere: Representations of Liminal Locality in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009), and Shakespeare in the Romanian Cultural Memory (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2006). She is a Fulbright Fellow (1998-1999), Humboldt Fellow (2009-2010), and SCIEX Fellow (2013-2014). She is editor of five volumes of essays about Shakespeare in Romania (2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2016) and director of the project Shakespeare in the Romanian Cultural Memory (2005-2008). Her main interests incorporate geocriticism and spatial literary studies, including representations of space, place, and geography in Shakespeare and his contemporaries. She is member of the International Committee of Correspondents for the World Shakespeare Bibliography.

References

Abbot, George. A briefe description of the whole worlde. London: T. Iudson, for Iohn Browne, 1599. STC 24.5.
Google Scholar

d’Avity, Pierre. The estates, empires, & principallities of the world. Translated by Edward Grimeston. London: Adam Islip, 1615. STC 988.
Google Scholar

Biddulph, William. The Travels of Certaine Englishmen. London: T. Haueland for W. Aspley, 1609. STC 3051.
Google Scholar

Blount, Henry, Sir. A Voyage into the Levant. London: I. L for Andrew Crooke, 1636. STC 3136.
Google Scholar

Boemus, Johannes. The manners, lauues, and customes of all nations. Translated by Edward Aston. London: G. Eld, 1611. STC 3198.5.
Google Scholar

Foglietta, Uberto. The Mahumetane or Turkish Historie. Translated by Ralph Carr. London: Thomas Este, 1600. STC 17997.
Google Scholar

Guicciardini, Francesco. Two discourses of Master Frances Guicciardin vvhich are wanting in the thirde and fourth bookes of his Historie. Translated by William Jones. London: William Ponsonbie, 1595.
Google Scholar

Hadžilemović, Omer. “Balkans, pre 1914.” Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopaedia. Ed. Jennifer Speake. Vol. 1 A to F. London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2003, 67-71.
Google Scholar

Hakluyt, Richard. The principal nauigations, voyages, traffiques and discoueries of the English nation. 2nd vol. London: George Bishop, Ralph Newberie, and Robert Barker, 1599-1600. STC 12626a.
Google Scholar

MacLean, Gerald. The Rise of Oriental Travel: English Visitors to the Ottoman Empire: 1580-1720. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
Google Scholar

Moryson, Fynes. An itinerary vvritten by Fynes Moryson Gent. London: Ion Beale, 1617. STC 18205.
Google Scholar

Nicolay, Nicolas de. The nauigations, peregrinations and voyages, made into Turkie by Nicholas Nicholay Daulphinois. Translated by T. Washington the Younger. London: Thomas Dawson, 1585. STC 18574.
Google Scholar

Ord, Melanie. Travel and Experience in Early Modern English Literature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Google Scholar

Ortelius, Abraham. An Epitome of Ortelius his Theater of the vvorld. London [Antwerp]: H. Swingenij [for]] Iohn Norton, 1601.
Google Scholar

Ortelius, Abraham. Theatrum orbis terrarum. Translated by William Bedwell. London: Officina Plantiniana, 1608. STC 18855.
Google Scholar

Polo, Marco. The Most Noble and Famous Trauels of Marcus Paulus. Translated by John Frampton. London: H. Bynneman for Ralph Nevvbery, 1579. STC 20092.
Google Scholar

Sherman, William H. “Stirrings and Searchings (1500-1720).” The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing. Ed. Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002, 17-36.
Google Scholar

Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice. Ed. John Russell Brown. The Arden Shakespeare. 6th ed. London: Routledge, 1988.
Google Scholar

Shakespeare, William. Othello. Ed. M.R. Ridley. The Arden Shakespeare. 6th ed. London and New York: Methuen, 1986.
Google Scholar

Shakespeare, William and George Wilkins. Pericles. Ed. Suzanne Gossett. The Arden Shakespeare. 5th ed. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018.
Google Scholar