ABSTRACT
The discovery of New Worlds at the turn the sixteenth century brought to Europe a new rhetoric and positive identity around the idea of geographical discovery. However, it also led to the flourishing of a genre that was in some ways deeply problematic. The notion of witnessing in the context of distance and novelty was in tension with written textual authorities, and could be contested, but this chapter argues that the establishing the traveller’s authority was only part of the problem. More insidious perhaps, the great texts of pioneering travel writing were intrinsically problematic in their process of composition, circulation, and publication. Taking as a starting point the classic examples of Varthema, Vespucci, and Pigafetta, all of which encapsulate the notion of discovery, distance and novelty in travel writing, this chapter will consider how these two problems were domesticated throughout the sixteenth century through a number of cultural mechanisms. In the long term, I shall argue, the second was the most difficult.
