French
Travel Narratives in the Renaissance
 The Age of Exploration
led to the increasing popularity of the travel narrative,
with accounts of voyages by Frenchmen to the Orient,
to the New World, to Italy, and within France itself.
André Thevet’s
Cosmographie
de Levant (Gordon 1554 .T54)
represents the French fascination with the Orient,
a destination for both pilgrims and traders.
Thevet’s
Singularitez de la France Antarctique (Gordon 1558 .T54) and
Jean de Léry’s
Histoire d'un voyage
fait en la terre du Bresil (Gordon 1578 .L47)
brought the New World to French readers of the
Renaissance. One of those readers, Michel
de Montaigne, drew on the Thevet and
Léry’s accounts of New World cannibals
in writing his famous essay, “Des
cannibales.”
Italy (and Rome in particular) fascinated the poets
and humanist philosophers of sixteenth-century France.
Joachim du Bellay composed the poems
of his Antiquitez de Rome about the poet’s
relationship to the past and the ravages of time represented
by the ruins of ancient Rome. Those who did not travel
to Italy themselves could turn to published travel
guides and narratives of visits to the archaelogical
ruins of Roman antiquity. An Italian living in France,
Gabriele Simeoni, published a curious
travel book, Les illustres obseruations
antiques du seigneur Gabriel Symeon, Florentin; en
son dernier voyage d'Italie l'an 1557 (Gordon
1558 .S55), which records the monuments and
inscriptions he encountered on his voyage to Rome.
The small woodcut illustrations of tombs and coins,
with occasional vignettes of places visited, reflect
the influence of the popular emblem book format on
the travel narrative. (Simeoni himself wrote the Italian
verse for three emblem books printed in Lyon.)
The Gordon Collection also
includes two volumes concerned with travel within France
itself. The royal travels of Charles IX through France
in 1564 and 1565 are recorded in Abel Jouan's Recueil
et discours du voyage du roy Charles IX. de ce nom à,
present regnant, : accompagné des choses dignes
de memoire faictes en chacun endroit faisant son dit
voyage en ses païs & prouinces de Champaigne,
Bourgoigne, Daulphiné, Prouence, Languedoc, Gascoigne,
Baiõne, & plusieurs autres lieux….
(Gordon 1567 .J68).
For those who might want
to undertake their own journey through the country,
Charles Estienne published La guide des
chemins de France, / reueue & augmentee pour la
troisiesme fois. Les fleuues du royaume de France, aussi
augmentez (Gordon 1553 .E78). This Gordon volume also includes Estienne's 1552 Voyages de plusieurs endroits de France: & encores de la terre Saincte, d’Espaigne, d’Italie, & autres pays.
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