Thomas Coryat

Cover picture for Thomas Coriate, Traueller for the English Wits , London, 1616

Thomas Coryat (also Coryate ) (* 1577 or 1579 in Odcombe , Somerset , † 1617 in Surat ) was an English traveler and writer. He is best known for his travelogue about his trip through Europe, mainly on foot .

Coryat first attended Westminster School , then Oxford University , where he studied theology, Greek, Latin and rhetoric for three years. He finished his studies without a degree, after which he lived again in Odcombe. Presumably after the death of his father in 1607, he moved to London and worked there for Prince Heinrich Friedrich , the eldest son of King James I , as a kind of "court master".

In 1608 he went on a five-month walk through Europe and published his memoirs in 1611 in the work Coryat's Crudities hastily gobbled up in Five Months Travels in France, Italy, & c . The travelogue paints a vivid picture of life in Europe at that time. It is of particular interest to music historians , as it provides information about the work of the so-called Venetian School , one of the most famous and most progressive musical styles in Europe. It also contains a detailed description of the festivities in the Church of San Rocco , during which the instrumental and polyphonic choral music of Giovanni Gabrielis , Bartolomeo Barbarinos and others was described. A second volume followed in 1611, entitled Coryats Crambe, or his Coleworte twice Sodden .

In 1612 Coryat set out again, this time to Asia, visiting Greece , the eastern Mediterranean , Persia and India . He sent letters home from Agra and other places reporting on his experiences. Coryat died while traveling in Surat in 1617 .

Coryat's writings were extremely popular in his day. His description of the customs and traditions to be found in Italy fell on fertile soil in England, where numerous aspects of Italian culture such as madrigal music had been valued for decades.

Coryat is considered the father of the so-called Grand Tour , an obligatory trip to Italy for the sons of the English nobility in the 18th century. He is also credited with introducing the fork in England.

literature

• Coryate, Thomas: The Venice and Rhine Cruise AD 1608 . Stuttgart: Steingrüben-Verlag 1970 ( library of classic travel reports )
• Dom Moraes / Sarayu Srivatsa: The Long Strider - How Thomas Coryate Walked From England to India in the Year 1613 . New Delhi, ISBN 0-670-04975-1
• Dreyer, Ralf: When traveling was a pleasure. A moral history of the Italian trip of Messrs. Montaigne, Coryate, Goethe & Co. Würzburg in 2009.
• Frontain, Raymond-Jean: Art. "Thomas Coryate". In: David. A. Richardson (ed.): Sixteenth-century British nondramatic writers, Volume 4. Detroit [u. a.] 1996, pp. 48-52 (= Dictionary of literary biography, Vol. 172).
• Strachan, Michael: The Life and Adventures of Thomas Coryate. London 1962.
• Wiedemann, Hermann: Montaigne and other travelers of the Renaissance. Three travel diaries in comparison: The Itinerario by de Beatis, the Journal de Voyage by Montaigne and the Crudities by Thomas Coryate. Trier 1999 (= border crossings, vol. 9).

Web links

• Literature by and about Thomas Coryat in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography