ABSTRACT
This essay adopts a microhistorical approach to the formation of three interrelated genres of the first half of the sixteenth century in continental Europe (the travel collection, the naufragium, and the utopia) – roughly speaking, the period of first globalization when the city-state of Venice was not only a dominant power in the spice trade and the continent’s major printing centre, but also an immediately involved witness to the shift from a Mediterranean-centred to an oceanic-centred economy. By focusing on a single site, I hope thereby to provide a privileged perspective on an instance of “world literature” as it becomes entangled in a variety of geocultural scales representing the complexities of the modern world-system.
