ABSTRACT
The growing amount of printed travel literature in the sixteenth century did not only meet an avid European readership but also created a number of epistemological problems: how could transcontinental travel reports be incorporated into existing bodies of knowledge? Which assumptions about the world could stand the test of new empirical evidence and what was the impact of new information about previously unknown geographies and biospheres on traditions of learning? Even though scholarship on the early modern transcontinental encounter has often focused on notions of newness or the “shock of discovery”, there is ample evidence that readers of travel reports often accepted new knowledge quickly. This article addresses the use of American and Asian travel writing in the Four Indian Voyages by German playwright and emblematist Gabriel Rollenhagen (1583–1619). His didactic satire consists of four ancient and medieval travel accounts but only uses them to mock their crude and fantastic depictions of the world beyond Europe. In a 127-page appendix, Rollenhagen identifies and corrects geographical errors and misrepresentations of the natural world in his sources by comparing them with up-to-date knowledge obtained from Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, Bernard Paludanus and others. By pointing out widespread errors and their origins in ancient sources, he presents his readership with correct information on the natural world and on global geography. His didactic strategy to disseminate knowledge ex negativo sheds new light on the question how new knowledge was accepted and implemented in traditions of learning and public discourses of popular education.
