CORYAT

(15777-1617)

Thomas Coryate was the most famous English traveler and travel writer of the early seventeenth century. Born in Somersetshire about 1577, Coryate at­tended Oxford, but like many young men not intending a career in the church, he left without taking a degree. After several years, probably spent rather aim­lessly, he made his way to King James I's* court and soon became popular for his comic intelligence, verbal dexterity, and willingness to be the butt of other courtiers' jokes.

In May 1608 Coryate embarked on an almost 2,000-mile tour of the European continent, much of which he completed on foot. The result of his travels was the huge comic work on which his future fame would rest, Coryats Crudities: Hastily Gobled up in Five Moneths Travells (1611). The Crudities contains many humorous passages and is marked by an erudite wit throughout, but it also provided future travelers (and in an age of very limited opportunities to voyage abroad, many would-be travelers) with a compendium of practical and sometimes rare information on continental travel. Moreover, his work also be­came something of an elaborate in-joke among English writers and members of court, since over one hundred pages of its nearly eight hundred are taken up with humorous dedicatory verses and mock panegyrics by some of contemporary England's greatest literary wits, including Ben Jonson.*

Encouraged by the success of his Crudities and two shorter sequels, Coryate set off on a second voyage in 1612, this time traveling to Greece, Asia Minor, the Holy Lands, and even India. Several of his letters were published during his absence and were well received in England, but Coryate died in India in 1617.

Bibliography

M. Strachan, The Life and Adventures ofThomas Coryate, 1962.

Thomas G. Olsen