Abstract
William Lithgow’s travel account, published first in 1614, 1623, and in 1632 as The Totall Discourse, fashions the narrator as a Scottish Protestant pilgrim enmeshed in endless tragicomic travails while navigating the Aegean amid fears of captivity and loss. The amount of copying from other accounts casts doubt on the author’s claim that his book is composed only by his “own eyesight, and ocular experience” and exemplifies the genre of travel writing in this period, combining plagiarism, fantasy, and fact. Lithgow’s reflections on mutability and on the rise and fall of empires are examined in connection with Thomas Coryat’s description of Troy, which functions for both travelers as a symbolic place of memory.
My Soyle I love, but I am borne to wander And I am glad, when I Extreames imbrace
William Lithgow 1
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Mitsi, E. (2017). “Fensed with Experience and Garnished with Truth”: Experience and Invention in William Lithgow’s Greek Journey. In: Greece in Early English Travel Writing, 1596–1682. New Transculturalisms, 1400–1800. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62612-3_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62612-3_5
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Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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Online ISBN: 978-3-319-62612-3
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