The Voyage of Thought: A 16th-Century Journey from France to Sumatra and Beyond

FAIN: FA-58617-15

Michael Wintroub
University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, CA 94704-5940)

The Voyage of Thought: A Sixteenth-Century Journey from France to Sumatra and Beyond is a micro-historical and cross-disciplinary analysis of the texts and contexts that informed the remarkable journey of the Dieppois ship captain, merchant, and poet, Jean Parmentier, as he sailed his ship, The Thought, to Sumatra in 1529. In tracing the itinerary of this voyage I examine not only an early attempt by the French to challenge Spanish and Portuguese oceanic hegemony and to carve out an empire in the Indies, but also commercial life among provincial merchant humanists in Normandy, the relationship of these merchants and explorers to the classical authorities they revered, the literary culture they cultivated, the techniques of oceanic navigation they pioneered, the distant peoples that they met, and the ways in which all these different ideas, practices and values were wrapped up in social, spiritual, religious and artistic practice.

Associated Products

The Voyage Of Thought: Navigating Knowledge Across the Sixteenth Century World (Book)
Title: The Voyage Of Thought: Navigating Knowledge Across the Sixteenth Century World
Author: Michael Wintroub
Abstract: The Voyage of Thought is a micro-historical and cross-disciplinary analysis of the texts and contexts that informed the remarkable journey of the French ship captain, merchant, and poet, Jean Parmentier, from Dieppe to Sumatra in 1529. In tracing the itinerary of this voyage, Michael Wintroub examines an early attempt by the French to challenge Spanish and Portuguese oceanic hegemony and to carve out an empire in the Indies. He investigates the commercial, cultural, and religious lives of provincial humanists, including their relationship to the classical authorities they revered, the literary culture they cultivated, the techniques of oceanic navigation they pioneered, and the distant peoples with whom they came into contact. Ideal for graduate students and scholars, this journey into the history of science describes the manifold and often contradictory genealogies of the modern in the early modern world.
Year: 2017
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 1107188237

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