Reading Coryats Crudities (1611)

Coryats Crudities, Thomas Coryat's account of his five-month tour of Europe, was published in 1611. This article argues that Coryat's "crudities" resist ideals of humanist pedagogy, where rhetorical digestio involved the proper organization and assimilation of knowledge. Coryat and his mock panegyrists explore connections between writing and intemperance, discussing the painful effects of pleasurable reading experiences on the bodies of aristocratic men. In so doing, they coin a new generic position for Crudities as a travelogue that resists truth telling but is nevertheless not quite a traveler's tall tale.