Old Worlds: Egypt, Southwest Asia, India, and Russia in Early Modern English Writing

Although much attention has been paid to early modern European travel to the New World, attention is just beginning to be paid to the travels in the Old World, even though they speak to contemporary concerns with categories like civilization, race, and nation as much as, or sometimes more than, the New World explorations. This book aligns travel narratives and historical surveys of parts of the Old World - Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and Russia - with texts by Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden that contributed to English ideas about those regions. Tracing the overlap between Graeco-Roman geography and the itineraries of Renaissance travelers and traders, Old Worlds brings together a rich array of texts that rewrite European traditions about a plural antiquity from an early modern English perspective.