Greece in Early English Travel Writing, 1596 1682

This book examines the letters, diaries, and published accounts of English and Scottish travelers to Greece in the seventeenth century, a time of growing interest in ancient texts and the Ottoman Empire. Through these early encounters, this book analyzes the travelers' construction of Greece in the early modern Mediterranean world and shows how travel became a means of collecting and disseminating knowledge about ancient sites. Focusing on the mobility and exchange of people, artifacts, texts, and opinions between the two countries, it argues that the presence of Britons in Greece and of Greeks in England aroused interest not only in Hellenic antiquity, but also in Greece's contemporary geopolitical role. Exploring myth, perception, and trope with clarity and precision, this book offers new insight into the connections between Greece, the Ottoman Empire, and the West.

Fills a gap in scholarship on the role of Greece in English connections to the Ottoman Empire Explores representations of seventeenth-century Greece as both an antique land and as part of the polycultural Mediterranean and a space of transcultural contact Contributes to the growing body of literature on Hellenism and travel writing Appeals to scholars of early modern English literature, comparative literature, Hellenic studies, and travel writing Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Autorentext
Efterpi Mitsi is Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.

Inhalt

1. Introduction.- 2. Angell in Oxford: The Travails of a Greek Monk in Seventeenth-Century England.- 3. The "fruit of travell": Fynes Moryson and Thomas Dallam in the Greek Islands.- 4. "A revelation of time": Translating Greece in George Sandys' Relation of a Journey .- 5. "Fensed with experience and garnished with truth": Experience and Invention in William Lithgow's Greek Journey.- 6. The Rediscovery of Athens in George Wheler's Journey into Greece .