Travel and Conflict in the Early Modern World

Gábor Gelléri is Lecturer in French at Aberystwyth UniversityRachel Willie is Reader in Early Modern Literary Studies at Liverpool John Moores University

• Introduction: travel and conflict Part 1: Language, translation and assimilation 1. Babel as a source of conflict: a case study of two discovery narratives 2. Language, mediation, conflict and power in early modern China: the roles of the interpreter in Matteo Ricci’s Journals 3. "Strange accidents": navigating conflict in Sir Thomas Smithes voiage and entertainment in Rushia Part 2: Travel, religion and the violence of the road 4. Arming the Alps through art: saints, knights and bandits on the early modern road 5. Between hermits and heretics: Maronite religious renewal and the Turk in Catholic travel accounts of Lebanon after the Council of Trent 6. The wars in Europe and the journeying play: Thomas Drue’s The Duchess Of Suffolk (1624) Part 3: War, diplomacy and dissimulation 7. Ambassadors as travellers in Italy in the second half of the fifteenth century 8. Squadrons of inkpots: Pietro Aretino and the narrativity of conflict 9. Avoiding conflict in the early modern Levant: Henry Blount’s adaptations in Ottoman lands Part 4: The art of travel and imaginary journeys 10. Ars apodemica gendered: female advice on travel 11. Travel, utopia, and conflict: patterns of irony in early modern utopian narratives 12. Lunar travel and lunacy: reading conflict in Aphra Behn’s The Emperor of the Moon

Travel and Conflict in the Early Modern World is a rich, wide-ranging and genuinely fascinating collection of essays, with contributions from across a range of disciplines. It will become standard reading for anyone interested in travel or travel writing - its modes, challenges, innovations and social and political dimensions - in the global Renaissance. Jane Grogan, Associate Professor, University College DublinEarly modern travel was a risky business, exposing those undertaking it to physical and mental dangers. Simultaneously, however, travel provided novel opportunities for complex negotiations and stimulating cultural encounters. The varied and overlapping connections between conflict and travel, real and imagined, and what they meant, are the focus of this thought-provoking collection of essays by leading scholars. Ranging across spaces, genres, modes, and geo-polities, the self-reflexive and creative uses of the conflicts travel engendered amongst those undertaking it provide a fascinating lens to explore early modern power dynamics in a number of dimensions. Claire Jowitt, Associate Dean and Professor of Renaissance Studies, University of East AngliaEach individual essay in this collection is impressive in its own right, but taken all together, they constitute a volume that is significantly greater than the sum of its parts. From the perils of travel to the perils that enforced travel, from real to imagined mobility that span real and imagined geo-political spaces, this is an ambitious and extraordinarily varied collection that demands attention from anyone interested in early modern travel, and in travel writing in general.Nandini Das, Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture, University of Oxford.