ABSTRACT
In 1611, Thomas Coryat of Odcombe, Somerset privately printed his Crudities, or 'raw, unrefined' observations of his travels to Europe in 1608. This chapter discusses aspects of the Crudities by seeking first to establish the social groupings solicited by Coryat in the text, and examines attempts by city wits to manipulate in the panegyric verses the associations to accrue to Coryat's identity as a man of Odcombe. It considers Coryat's representation in writings by John Taylor, an amateur satirical pamphleteer and Thames boatman, who, as a metropolitan yet popularist writer, cuts through oppositions at play in the panegyric verses. The chapter provides a useful context for the identities Coryat had attempted to combine in his own self-presentation as the learned fool and well-travelled provincial. Taylor's works both participate in, and comment upon, the panegyric verses' attempt to exploit a comical incongruity between the parochiality of Odcombe and the exotic lure of the foreign locations Coryat had travelled to from it.
