| Authorship Notes |
A lengthy praise of mercantile travel in doggerel verse. The text is in three sections, viz. i. The Wonders of Travell ii. The Worthes of Travell iii. The Way of Travell. While this is not a true apodemica - in the sense of the late humanist discourse arguing for the value of specific forms of genteel travel in education, moral, civil, and spiritual terms - 'The Tryall of Travell' overlaps with many ideas familiar from that tradition. The include the praise of trade in scriptural and biblical terms, travel conceived as a form of spiritual journey, the use of biblical and classical exemplar to justify travel, and the conception of travel as a means of reading the book of the world through observation. However, the text very much focuses on travel for mercantile and imperial (colonial) purposes, rather than say gentlemanly travel as a complement to an arts education.
See David J. Morrow, 'Salvation, social struggle, and the ideology of the Company Merchant: Baptist Goodall's The Tryall of Trauell (1630)' in 'Global Traffic: Discourses and Practices of Trade in English Literature and Culture from 1550 to 1700' ed. B. Sebek, S. Deng (2016), 57-76. |
