The voyages and adventures of Fernand Mendez Pinto, published in 1653, is the first English translation of Fernão Mendes Pinto’s 1583 memoir Peregrinação, which details Pinto’s experiences in various parts of the world not yet widely explored by contemporary European powers. In being translated into English at all—around the beginning of the English book trade’s boom—the text signifies the synthesis of England’s interests in the ‘exotic’ worlds of the ‘Other’ into a literary form for private consumption.1 As a travel narrative, the book’s aesthetic value differs from other literature concerning international relations at the time such as Charles I’s Royal Charters which had more overtly political characters, reflecting the multiplicity of printed works at this time.
Several of the book’s physical aspects indicate an implied educated, likely male readership, which is suggested by the translator, Henry Cogan Gent, in his dedication of the book to William Wentworth, 2nd Earl of Strafford, in which he states his belief that ‘the most curious Wits, which delight in reading of rare Books’ may find satisfaction in Pinto’s account of ‘Those Oriental parts of the World… without so much as stirring out of their Studies’.2 While the types of literature being distributed in Pope’s Head Alley, the location of the booksellers’ shop, would have been wide-ranging, the book’s large size, that it was bound in leather, and the use of red ink on its title page (rare at this time due to the cost of coloured ink), indicate that the book would have been expensive to print, which in turn suggests an affluent intended reader.3 This is furthered by Cogan’s own level of education and the genre of literature he was translating around the same time as The voyages and adventures, having translated Ibrahim, Or, the Illustrious Bassa, a romance novel, from French in 1652, and in 1653 translating both The History of Diodorus Sicarus from Greek, and The scarlet gown or the history of all the present cardinals of Rome from Italian.4
Gent’s fluency in Portuguese, French, Italian, Greek and English, and the nature of his works therefore signal that Gent was producing literature for the social elite, emphasising the fact that matters of global exploration were the exploits of the moneyed in society. The publication of The voyages and adventures thus represents among the gentry a growing individualised, fetishistic interest in the extra-European world, which is demonstrated through the use of red ink for words related to exoticism on the title page. Given that Gent’s purpose in translating the book was so that his readers could ‘consider’ the laws, riches and government ‘of those people living, whom we term Barbarians’, it is no surprise that the red ink, intended to catch the eye, is reserved for those words related to travel, difference and the extraordinary such as ‘Ethiopia’, ‘Tartaria’, ‘Shipwrack’ and ‘Slave’, the sensationalism of which reflects a nascent Orientalism.5
The book as a translated text also engages interestingly with ideas around ownership of literature and the construction of selfhood through writing which were emerging during this period. Before beginning his translation of Pinto’s account, Gent adds a dedication to the Earl of Strafford in which he explains that he was inspired to translate Pinto’s memoir by earlier translations of it into Spanish and French, and dedicates four pages to an ‘Apologetical Defence of Fernand Mendez Pinto’ in which he asserts the reliability of Pinto’s account, which in itself alerts us to its dubious nature. That the defence is extremely detailed and elaborately bordered signifies its authority, meaning that while he is defending Pinto’s narrative, Gent is also asserting himself as a writer through the pre-eminence of his words. These paratexts reconstruct Pinto’s work, and thus Gent simultaneously retells Ferñao’s memoir in English and ‘writes over’ it, constructing his own distinctly English identity through his engagement with the distinctly ‘Other’ identity of Pinto. Gent’s interaction with Pinto’s text in this way complicates the question of ownership and can be seen as mirroring England’s supersession of Portugal as the dominant colonising force in the eighteenth century.
The book’s dedication to William Wentworth, son of Thomas Wentworth, a chief advisor of Charles I who was executed for his desire to consolidate royal power, points to its political conservatism. This can also be inferred by the book’s survival of the mass censorship of literature ushered in by the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and its popularity in England, reflected by its being reprinted in 1663, only ten years after its first publication, then in 1891, 1892, 1897, and 1961.6 The proliferation of subsequent editions of the book in England alone in the post-Restoration period suggests its Royalist sympathies which are highlighted by the book’s ending, as Pinto concludes his account with the assertion that kings are ‘the lively source from whence all recompense do flow’, in whom ‘there is alwaies found an holy and acknowledging zeal’ to do good to both those who serve and do not serve them.7 Given the question of veracity raised by the Apologetical Defence, by choosing to translate the end of Pinto’s account in a way that unequivocally characterises kings as benevolent and the pinnacle of godliness, Gent positions Pinto as in favour of the status quo, which he appropriates for English Royalist purposes in translating the memoir.
The existence of The voyages and adventures in mid-seventeenth century London reflects a growing fascination with the lives and experiences of othered identities and helps us to locate England’s eventual imperial legacy, highlighted by the book’s extensive afterlife. The book also demonstrates the diversification of literature in the burgeoning London book trade, not just in its content, but also in its form as a translated memoir. Its status as a memoir particularly illustrates the growing prominence of literature as a means of self-invention at this time, with the exclusivity of the book demonstrating that the self could be constructed through the production of certain literature, and that equally, through the act of reading certain literature, one’s identity could also be constructed and reinforced.
Bibliography
‘Browsing by Author, “Cogan, Henry.”’, Oxford Text Archive, <https://ota.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/repository/xmlui/browse?value=Cogan,%20Henry.&type=author> [accessed 11 October 2022]
‘The history of Diodorus Siculus : Containing all that is most memorable and of greatest antiquity in the first ages of the world until the war of Troy’ WorldCat, <https://www.worldcat.org/title/history-of-diodorus-siculus-containing-all-that-is-most-memorable-and-of-greatest-antiquity-in-the-first-ages-of-the-world-until-the-war-of-troy/oclc/222924602 [accessed 11 October 2022]
McElligot, Jason, ‘The Book Trade, Licensing, and Censorship’ in The Book Trade, Licensing, and Censorship’ in The Oxford Handbook of Literature and the English Revolution, ed. by Laura Lunger Knoppers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) pp. 135-153
Pinto, Ferñao Mendes, The Voyages and Adventures of Fernand Mendez Pinto, a Portugal: During His Travels for the Space of One and Twenty Years in the Kingdoms of Ethiopia, China, Tartaria, Cauchinchina, Calaminham, Siam, Pegu, Japan, and a Great Part of the East-Indiaes, with a Relation and Description of Most of the Places Thereof, Their religion, Laws, Riches, Customs, and Government in Time of Peace and War, Where He Five Times Suffered Shipwrack, Was Sixteen Timessold, and Thirteen Times Made a Slave, trans. by H.C. Gent (London: J. Macock, 1653)
‘The voyages and adventures of Ferdinand Mendez Pinto ..’ Hathi Trust Digital Library, <https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/102599651> [accessed 27 October 2022]
- Jason McElligot, ‘The Book Trade, Licensing, and Censorship’ in The Oxford Handbook of Literature and the English Revolution, ed. by Laura Lunger Knoppers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 138.
↩︎ - H. C. Gent, ‘Dedication’ in The Voyages and Adventures of Fernand Mendez Pinto, a Portugal:During His Travels for the Space of One and Twenty Years in the Kingdoms of Ethiopia, China, Tartaria, Cauchinchina, Calaminham, Siam, Pegu, Japan, and a Great Part of the East-Indiaes, with a Relation and Description of Most of the Places Thereof, Their religion, Laws, Riches, Customs, and Government in Time of Peace and War, Where He Five Times Suffered Shipwrack, Was Sixteen Timessold, and Thirteen Times Made a Slave, (London: J. Macock, 1653).
↩︎ - McElligott, ‘The Book Trade, Licensing and Censorship, p. 138.
↩︎ - ‘Browsing by Author, “Cogan, Henry.”’, Oxford Text Archive, <https://ota.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/repository/xmlui/browse?value=Cogan,%20Henry.&type=author> [accessed 11 October 2022];
‘The history of Diodorus Siculus : Containing all that is most memorable and of greatest antiquity in the first ages of the world until the war of Troy’ WorldCat, <https://www.worldcat.org/title/history-of-diodorus-siculus-containing-all-that-is-most-memorable-and-of-greatest-antiquity-in-the-first-ages-of-the-world-until-the-war-of-troy/oclc/222924602 [accessed 11 October 2022].
↩︎ - Gent, ‘Dedication’ in The voyages and adventures.
↩︎ - ‘The voyages and adventures of Ferdinand Mendez Pinto ..’ Hathi Trust Digital Library, <https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/102599651> [accessed 27 October 2022].
↩︎ - Ferñao Mendes Pinto, The voyages and adventures, trans. by H.C. Gent, p. 325.
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