TRANSLATING EMPIRE, TRANSLATING CARTIER AND LÉRY INTO ENGLISH: TEXT AND CONTEXT IN COMPARATIVE NARRATIVES OF EXPANSION AND THE NEW WORLD

Abstract

This article provides comparative texts and contexts between Brazil and Canada in the Atlantic world, not simply an Inter-American comparison, but a trans-Atlantic and global typology. It focuses on the translation of empire through translation, particularly of part of Jacques Cartier’s narratives about Canada by John Florio in 1580 and of Jean de Léry’s account of the voyage to Brazil in Samuel Purchas’ collection in 1625. English travel or encounter literature is in the service of contact, exploration, encounter and possible possession and settlement. The Spanish, through Columbus, and the Portuguese as well as the French are part of this comparative literature and these cultural texts, which are intertextual and translational, among themselves and with English culture and literature. The encounter between the Indigenous peoples and Europeans in the New World, in Brazil and Canada is central to changing the literature and cultures of the Americas, Europe, Africa, and of the world as seen in the texts analyzed here. The building of English travel accounts, literature and empire is also, to an important degree, intertextual, intercultural, and translational.

Keywords
Cartier; Léry; Translation; New World; Comparative Literature

English, British and English-speaking representations of the New World, including of Brazil, in colonial times and after, depend on the translation and interpretation of texts in Portuguese, Spanish, French, and other languages, including Latin and Dutch, most centrally but not exclusively, through the collections that Richard Hakluyt the Younger and Samuel Purchas brought together and, later, by interested societies such as the Hakluyt Society, founded in 1846, to publish editions of primary texts of travels and voyages (Hair and Bridges 1996; Hakluyt Society). The representation of this expansion, exploration and settlement in English is comparative and “translational.” Thus, English literature and literature in English include these accounts and is part of comparative literature. The intertextuality of accounts about the New World, including Brazil, means that English travel literature includes Portuguese, Spanish, French and other narratives (Camões 1973; see Camões 1655, 1963). This is an instance of each national literature or literature in a language being comparative, identity coming from difference. These encounter narratives are triangular because they are among Europeans as well as between Europeans and Natives – specific groups within these cultures. Although I will be examining context and examining some texts in colonial times, I will concentrate most on John Florio’s English translation of Jacques Cartier and the translation in Samuel Purchas of an extract from Jean de Léry’s history of a voyage to Brazil, which discusses European and Native cultures in Brazil. This text by Léry, a French Protestant, appears in English decades later, but some of the Huguenots had also lived in London in the sixteenth century. In 1572, in England, Christopher Marlowe wrote about the Saint Bartholomew Massacre in The Massacre at Paris (1594). Although the Norse were in Greenland and Newfoundland hundreds of years before Columbus and they wrote sagas, the Columbian landfall and its aftermath is our focus here because of the intensification and the extensive settlement and effects throughout the Americas. These textual representations, including translations of texts about the New World after Columbus, were part of an exploration, colonization and settlement that had severe consequences for Indigenous and African peoples, such as their destruction through violence, slavery and disease (Cook 1998; Crosby 1986; Mignolo 1995; Stannard 1992). Columbus helped to precipitate further exploration among those countries, like Portugal, England and France, that did not take up Columbus’ proposal, and Henry VII had Giovanni Caboto or John Cabot sail west in 1497. He reached Newfoundland and perhaps Cape Breton in what is now Canada (Cartier and Biggar 1924; Morison 1955; Duviols 1978; Guerreiro 1994; Vachon et al. 1982). The Portuguese sent out Cabral and the French (Normans) had Gonneville go westward as well, so Brazil and the New World were not secure for Spain no matter what the papal bulls said. The Portuguese and Western European exploration began in the islands, such as Madeira and the Canary Islands, and in Africa before the sailing westward (Green and Dickason 1989; Coben 2015).

Let us explore briefly this comparison with Portugal and Spain and branch out to England and France, how their empires expanded to the New World, including Brazil, and how their accounts represented these lands that were new to them (Livermore 1953; López-Portillo, Spain, 2013; Phillips 1992; Philips and Philips 1992). The texts are part of comparative literature, a comparing of cultures, and so become part of many fields and sub-fields, including comparative studies of travel literature, ethnology, anthropology, history, politics, cultural history, empires and the like. Here, I wish to highlight Portugal and Brazil – partly because they deserve more attention to scholars and readers working in Spanish, French, English and other languages besides Portuguese – and stress France and Canada –, partly because they may not receive as much attention in Spanish and Portuguese (Duviols). These are different poles of the New World. By examining the translation of Cartier and Léry into English, I bring together in English these French texts about the 1530s to the 1550s in Canada and Brazil in an inter-American comparison but in a wider context of expansion to Africa and globally. For some time, I have tried to study literature and empires and their aftermath comparatively as a way of understanding and of limiting the contributions of one culture, as a means of avoiding linguistic, national and cultural chauvinism.² The example of Portugal can help those in other traditions to understand their own. Paradoxically, comparative studies teach us not simply about comparison but about the different texts and cultures being compared. The contribution of Portuguese narratives about cultural encounter, slavery and empire are important for Europe, the Americas, and the world (López-Portillo, “Before Columbus” n.d.; Helps 1855). Along with the accounts of and surrounding Columbus, they provide a context for Cartier and Léry.

Let us start before Columbus as each story has many beginnings. 1492 was crucial but the Norse had been to the Americas hundreds of years before and the Portuguese had been pushing into Africa in 1415. Let us begin with the Portuguese in Europe and Africa. There are some important moments in Portuguese history that affect this expansion to Africa, the New World and elsewhere. In 1128, Portugal became independent from Leon and Castile. Pope Alexander III deemed Afonso Henriques (1128–1185) king in 1179. Then, in 1249, the Moors were expelled in a unified nation. In 1383, King Ferdinand, the last of the Afonsina dynasty, died. When John I of Castile attempted to seize Portugal, John, prince of Aviz, was victorious. On 4 August 1578, King Sebastian died in battle at Alcazar (Spanish, Alcazarquiver, Arabic, Ksar el-Kebir) in North Africa. George Peele wrote a play, The Battle of Alcazar (c. 1588-1589, which was published in 1594), in London, about the deaths of Sebastian as well as of an Englishman, Captain Stukeley, a work that is part of English dramatic and literary history (Peele). After Sebastian’s uncle, Cardinal Henry, died in 1580, Philip II of Spain became Philip I of Portugal and, until 1640, Portugal and Spain were joined under one crown (Russell-Wood 1998; Spain, Portugal and the Atlantic 2013).

Slavery is a key part of Portugal, its empire and the Americas. In this conflict, the Portuguese and the Moors took slaves from each other. After the Portuguese capture of Ceuta, in 1415, the number of slaves multiplied and slavery was something that the papacy sanctioned. After that conquest, Portugal performed military actions in Morocco. Portugal also undertook voyages to Guinea and made claims in Africa. In the 1430s, when the first African slaves were brought to Lisbon, Portugal became an important centre in the slave trade. In 1434, Gil Eanes came to upper Niger, Guinea and Senegal, where, in the 1440s and 1450s, there was a trade in gold and slaves. Moreover, slavery, after 1500, became key in Portuguese colonization of the New World. An important text in the Iberian seizing and trading of Africans slaves into their countries and beyond is by Gomes Eannes de Azurara (Azurara, Descobrimentoe, 1841). A chronicler attached to Prince Henry of Portugal, Azurara represents the Portuguese landing of 235 African slaves near Lagos, in August 1444 (Azurara, Descobrimentoe; Curious). The trauma is something that Azurara stresses. He wonders about how this scene could not move the heart, to witness the faces of the captured people wet with tears, their voices sadly groaning, looking to the heavens “as if asking help of the Father of Nature; others struck their faces with the palms of their hands, throwing themselves at full length upon the ground; others made their lamentations in the manner of a dirge, after the custom of their country” (Azuzara, Chronicle, 1896-99, 81). Azuzara describes the division of the African captives there: “And you who are so busy in making that division of the captives, look with pity upon so much misery; and see how they cling one to the other, so that you can hardly separate them” (Azurara, Chronicle, 81–82; Russell, The English Intervention, 1955, 240-242). Azuzara represents the misery of the people, taken, transported, torn from their families. Violence and exploitation are something that the Portuguese, Spaniards and other Western Europeans bring to the New World, after Columbus.

But before Columbus, there is a wider context in terms of religion, exploration and other areas. In this framework, Duarte Pacheco Pereira is a germane author, who writes about the “discovery” and “when the first negroes were brought to these realms” (Pereira 1937, 63–64). Duarte Pacheco Pereira’s Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis seems to have been written in the first decade of the sixteenth century. Ironically, it was published in 1892 to mark Columbus’s landfall in the Western Atlantic (Pereira). From 1435 to 1486, the Portuguese crossed the Tropic of Cancer, the Equator and the Congo River and, in 1488, Bartolomeu Dias sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and reached the Indian Ocean (Milward 1994). There was a religious justification for exploration and expansion. Pope Nicholas V issued two bulls. The first is Dum diversas (June 18, 1452), which notes the Portuguese conquests and authorizes the king of Portugal power to wage war on infidels and to reduce them to serfdom in the service of conversion. The second, Romanus Pontifex (January 8, 1454), lauds the conquests and discoveries of Portugal (Davenport 1917-1937). It also recognizes the monopoly of Prince Henry the Navigator (Anderson 1969). Portugal became an important centre in the slave trade. Moreover, slavery, after 1500, became key in Portuguese colonization of the New World.

Although I have been focusing a good deal on Portugal and Brazil, I, in comparative literature and studies such as this one, also stress a contextual and comparative element. Columbus is part of the history of empires, exploration, slavery, expansion and cultural exchanges and encounters. The Portuguese connection with this Italian explorer is something I will touch on briefly. The Portuguese court refused Toscanelli’s proposal for a westward voyage in 1474 and Columbus’ a decade later. In Portugal, from 1476 to 1484, Columbus, a Genoese, learned navigation, Portuguese and Spanish (Russell, The English Intervention 1955; Dutto; Diffie and Winius 1977; Russell, Prince Henry 2000). The project, proposals and voyages of Columbus become a road not taken for Portugal and other countries.

Both François Ier of France and Elizabeth I of England denied the papal bulls donating vast lands in the expansion to Spain and Portugal (Julien et al. 1946, 14; McAlister 1984, 199; Green and Dickason; Pagden 1995, 47). The English State papers and other documents before the voyages of Martin Frobisher show Elizabeth I’s policy to circumvent the Spaniards and Portuguese in the New World to occupy, as the French were also doing, lands the Iberian powers had not occupied (Anon 1867, 4-5). From the 1550s to the mid-1620s, writers and editors in France and England followed Ramusio in bringing together collections of voyages, for instance those by André Thevet, Marc Lescarbot, Richard Hakluyt the Younger and Samuel Purchas. Writing in 1600 in a dedication to Sir Robert Cecil, Hakluyt speaks about “the fourth part of the world, which more commonly then properly is called America: but by the chiefest Authors The new world. New, in regard of the new and discouery thereof mase by Christopher Colon, alias Columbus, a Genouois by nation, in the yere of grace 1492,” and then he discusses “the huge extension” of the “world” (Hakluyt 5; Colón 1959). The exploration and expansion came from many states and cultures in Europe, and the project involved translation, and Columbus was a recurrent figure and theme, as Hakluyt indicates 108 years after his landfall in the western Atlantic (Mancall 2007; Jowitt and Carey 2012).

In England, for instance, the ghost of Columbus haunted its exploration and empire and later in the United States, Columbus was appropriated as a way to create an American identity. For example, George Gasgoigne wrote a sonnet as part of a preface to Humphrey Gilbert’s Discourse. Gasgoigne represents Gilbert as discovering something Columbus and those other explorers had not. Gasgoigne is part of the English and European anxiety of missed opportunities and origins because Spain had taken up Columbus’ enterprise and they had not (Gasgoigne 1576; Gilbert 1576; Sullivan 2005).

Joel Barlow’s The Columbiad (1813) is part of an American literary effort after independence from Britain to establish an identity, partly by appropriating Columbus (Barlow). An Italian, Columbus appears in canto xv of Tasso’s (1600) Gierusalem Liberata, part of which Richard Fairfax translates in 1600 as “Thy ship (Columbus) shall her canuasse wing / Spread ore that world, …” (Tasso 273). In the Paris edition of 1813 of The Columbiad, Barlow quotes this canto as the epigraph, in Italian (Barlow vi). In his preface, Barlow is explicit in his use of a poem that inserts Columbus in a title that echoes Homer’s Iliad: “The Columbiad is a patriotic poem; the subject is national and patriotic” (Barlow v). Thus, there were reactions to Columbus, the man, and literary and other representations of him after his death. Before getting to Florio’s translation of Cartier and the translation of Léry, I will discuss briefly texts about and beyond Columbus in and about the New World.

The encounter between Europeans and Natives (Indigenous or Aboriginal peoples) is central, as it cuts across different accounts and voyages in various Western European cultures as they explore or settle in the New World. Cabral’s voyage to Brazil and beyond from Portugal in 1500 has no one narrative that describes the expedition, but the letter of 1 May from Pedro Vaz de Caminha to King Manuel of Portugal represents encounters with the Natives, including their trade, the Native nakedness (shameful for the author) (Caminha in The Voyage of Pedro Álvares, ed. Greenlee, 1937, 8, 10-11, 14) and the author’s rationalized voyeurism (speaking for the “we” of the Portuguese) when they watch, including their private parts – three or four girls, very young, very pretty –naked and apparently pre-pubescent (15), and the engagement of the Portuguese with the Indigenous peoples. Caminha also represents salient points, saying, for instance, that

the captain ordered Nicolao Coelho and Bartolameu Dias to go on shore, and they took those two men, and let them go with their bows and arrows. To each of them he ordered new shirts and red hats and two rosaries of white bone beads to be given and they carried them on their arms, with rattles and bells. And he sent with them to remain there a young convict, named Affonso Ribeiro, the servant of Dom Joham Tello, to stay with them, and learn their manner of living and customs; and he ordered me to go with Nicolao Coelho

(13-14).

The Portuguese give gifts, including “rosaries,” as if to encourage conversion, and he mentions a convict as part of the cultural contact. As Greenlee explains, Vasco da Gama had included ten or twelve convicts for the same purpose as this fleet did: it included twenty banished men or convicts, who had been condemned to death, and who were, in return for a pardon, supposed to learn Native languages and convert the Indigenous peoples (Greenlee 1937, 14n1). Caminha, despite talking about religious themes, conversion, the Gospel and the like, seems to be much taken with the female Natives. Here, is another instance of this attitude:

Others wore caps of yellow feathers, others of red, others of green; and one of the girls was all painted from head to foot with that paint, and she was so well built and so rounded and her lack of shame was so charming, that many women of our land seeing such attractions, would be ashamed that theirs were not like hers

(Caminha 16).

Here is a mixture, in a letter to the king, of ethnographical detail, after religious discourse, and then a curious cultural comparison in a kind of ventriloquy and displacement, imagining that women in Portugal would be ashamed of their bodies compared to the Native woman, who has no shame. Despite framing much of the letter in terms of conversion and the gospel, Caminha admires a woman without shame, a kind of prelapsarian innocence compared with the shame after the Fall. He seems also to value watching a girl’s or woman’s nakedness, as if he might escape his own shame through this gaze, making justifications and deflections, perhaps expressing a longing he cannot be too explicit about. This passage mixes voyeurism with observation.

The expansion into new lands and the encounter with Natives are also significant in the French accounts. For instance, a Norman, Binot Paulmier de Gonneville, sailed to Brazil in 1503–1505. Gonneville’s account begins by explaining that Bastiam Moura and Diègue Cohinto, two Portuguese, helped the Normans find the route to the Indies, which Portuguese law considered to be illegal (Gonneville qtd. in Cartier, Voyages 1981, 40; Gonneville 1946, 36). The French were challenging the Portuguese in Brazil (Certeau 1993). Just as Columbus had kidnapped Natives in the New World, so too did Paulmier de Gonneville when he took Essomericq back while returning from Brazil to Honfleur. Ramusio says that, by 1504, fishing vessels from Britanny reached Newfoundland and that, in 1508, the Pensée, going from Dieppe to Cape Bonavista, took back seven Natives (Ramusio, Navigationi et Viaggi, 1550, III, 423 verso in Biggar, 1911, xxii). The French tried to circumvent the Spanish in North America. A Florentine living in Rouen, Giovanni da Verrazzano voyaged to North America in 1523–1524 (Herval 1933). Although Verrazzano’s original report to the king is not extant, we have four Italian versions, including Ramusio’s text of 1556, translated and appearing in Richard Hakluyt the Younger’s Divers Voyages (1582) and The Principall Navigations (1589). Verrazzano says of the Natives: “They are very generous and give away all they have. We made great friends with them” (Wroth 1970, 138).

Translations, as I have said, are central in this western European intertextuality, and are related to editing and collecting part of this expansion globally, including to the New World. Translators are part of literature and culture in English and other languages. In 1580, John Florio, an Italian Protestant living in England, translated into English Ramusio’s Italian translation of the original French account of the two navigations of Jacques Cartier to Canada (Yates 1934). In “The Episle Dedicatorie,” which is addressed to Edmond Bray, High Sheriff of the County of Oxford, Florio justifies his translation: “[myselfe] haue the rather aduentured to translate this part of Nauigation, whiche (I assure my selfe with other mens trauel and diligence) may be an occasion of no smal commoditie and benefite to this our Countrie of Englande” (Florio in Cartier, Aij.; I have changed the long s to short s in this text). The benefit that Florio specifies of his translation of the travel of others is not literary: “And herein the more to animate and encourage the Englishe Marchants , I doe onely (for breuitie sake) propose vnto them the infinite treasures (not hidden to themselues), whiche both the Spaniardes, the Portugales, and the Venetians haue seuerally gained by their suche nauigations and trauailes” (Florio in Cartier Aij, 1580.). The example of Spain, Portugal and Venice have provided Florio with something that he can convey to merchants in England – treasures that are “infinite.” English texts, exploration and trade benefit from other European states, cultures, language and exploration, part of a comparative network.

“To All Gentlemen, Merchants, and Pilots” is the next part of the front matter to this volume, which on the next three pages has the header, “To the Reader,” and represents another phase in Florio’s introduction to his material and justification of it. He begins: “When I had taken in hande to translate thys Treatise, which I did for the benefite and behoofe of those that shall attempt any newe discouverie in the Northweast partes of America, I thought good brieflye to touch the vse of my translation that the Reader may see and consider the drift of my trauell” (Florio, “To All,” in Cartier B.j.). Florio has done the translation to benefit others who will seek discovery in the northern part of the New World. His translation will translate them through travel.

Florio says that although Cartier’s account may appear “barraine,” it describes a province “rather contemned than throughly knowen,” “if the Marchant Venturer, or skilfull Pilot, or whosoeuer desirous of newe Discoueries, haue the readyng and perusing thereof, for whome especially I haue done it into Englishe, they will find matter worthy the looking, and consequently, gratefully accept my paines herein” (Florio in Cartier B.j.). Here, Florio appeals to merchants and would-be discoverers “perusing” his translation and showing gratitude for the “paines” he has taken. Florio creates a typology between Europe and America, making of his comparison a way to promote the New World: “For here is the Description of a Countrey no lesse fruitful and pleasant in al respects than is England, Fraunce, or Germany, the people, though simple and rude in manners, and destitute of the knowledge of God or any good lawes, yet of nature gentle and tractable, and most apt to receiue the Christian Religion, and to subiect themselues to some good gouernement” (Florio in Cartier B.j.). The comparison describes the land in northern America, which Cartier represents, affirming that it is as good as that in leading European countries, but represents the people of northern America ambivalently: their manners are not sophisticated and polished, they are ignorant of God and laws, but they are a gentle people open to Christianity and subject to a European political order, tropes used in Columbus and ones persistent in contact narratives by Europeans of various states in their encounters with the land and peoples of the New World (Cartier and Biggar; Cook; Foucqueron; Tremblay, 2020).

These accounts also represent resources, and here Florio promotes the lands for trading, saying that “the commodities of the Countrey not inferiour to the Marchandize of Moscouy, Danske, or many other frequented trades” (Florio in Cartier B.j.). Beyond this typology of trade between the Old and New World, Florio’s promotion stresses another advantage: “the voyage verye shorte, being but three weekes sayling from Bristowe, Plymmouth, or any commodious Porte of the Weast Country, with a direct course to the coast of the Newe found land” (Florio in Cartier B.j r-v.). Newfoundland is nearby and worth travelling to, and Florio amplifies:

Al which oportunities besides manye others, mighte suffice to induce oure Englishemen, not onely to fall to some traffique wyth the Inhabitants, but also to plant a Colonie in some conuenient place, and so to possesse the Countrey without the gainsaying of any man, whiche was the iudgement and counsell of Iohn Baptista Ramusius, a learned and excellent Cosmographer, & Secretary to the famous state of Venice, whose words, bicause they are not impertinēt to this purpose, I haue here set downe.

(Florio in Cartier B.j v.).

Florio shifts from trade between the English and American Natives to planting a colony for possession of the land without opposition, and he appeals to Giovanni Battista Ramusio, the Italian translator of Cartier and an authority in cosmography in Venice. This is another example of the power of translation and intertextuality in English and European travel narratives and literatures in accounts that are part of what we consider to be the literary but also belong very much to the world of trade and politics.

Ramusio’s collection of voyages, Navigationi et viaggi (1556), inspired similar collections in French and English. Florio continues to refer to the authority of Ramusio: “Why doe not the Princes (saieth he) whyche are to deale in these affaires, sende forth two or three Colonies to inhabit the Country, & to reduce this sauage natiō to some ciuilitie?” (Florio in Cartier B.j v.). Thus, Florio uses repetition to stress the promotion of colonization and of the lands of the New World: “considering what a battle and fruitfull soyle it is, how replenished with all kinde of graine, how it is stored wyth al sortes of Byrdes and Beastes, wyth such faire and mighty Ri∣uers, that Captaine Carthier and his company, in one of them sayled vppe a hundreth and foure score leagues, findyng the countrey peopled on both sides in greate abundaunce” (Florio in Cartier B.j v.). Florio emphasizes the great rivers and abundance of Canada, once more representing the land as a way to promote it. As with Columbus, the goal lies beyond these colonies: “And moreouer, to cause the Gouernors of those Colonies to send forth men to search and discouer the North lands about Terra del Lauorader, and toward Weast northweast to the Seas whiche are to saile to the Country of Cataya, and from thence to the Ilands of Molucke” (Florio in Cartier B.j v.). The great goal for Western Europeans in the north of the New World is the northwest passage to Asia, the original place Columbus sought in his western enterprise.

The example of Spain persists after Columbus, with the Portuguese, English, French and others playing catch-up:

These were enterprises to purchase immortall praise, which the Lord Anthony di Mendoza Viceroy of Mexico, willing to put in execution, sent forth his Cap∣tains both by Sea and by Land vpon the Northweast of Nuoua Spagona, and discouered the Kingdome of the seauen Cities about Ciuola And Franciscus Vasques de Coronada, passed from Mexico by lande towarde the Northweast 2850 miles, in so muche, that he came to the Sea, whyche lyeth betweene Cataya and America,where he met with the Catayan shyppes.

(Florio in Cartier B.j v.)

Decades after Columbus, the Spaniards and other Europeans are still looking to get to Asia and its riches, although they came to understand that the New World was not Cathay and adjacent areas. Spain continues to be an example – Florio cites two Spaniards here – even as England and France (as Portugal did) tried to circumvent Spain in the New World.

The sense of geography was not accurate for Florio: “And no doubt, if the French men in this their newe Fraunce, would haue discouered vp further into the land towards the Weast northweast partes, they shoulde haue founde the Sea, and might haue sayled to Cataya” (Florio in Cartier B.j v.). The quest for a westward sea route from Europe to Asia, in this case in the north, remains, and Florio continues to appeal to authority: “Thus much out of Ramusius, where you may see this learned mans iudgement concerning the planting of Colonies, and inhabiting these countries, whych might be a meane, not only to discouer the Sea on the backe-side, as he desireth, but also to come vnto the knowledge of the Countries adiacent” (Florio in Cartier B.j v.-Bji). This kind of detail and elaboration builds the case of promotion and is a kind of multiple authority: the Cartier narrative, the Ramusio translation of the French text of Cartier into Italian as well as Ramusio’s work as an editor and collector, the Florio translation from Italian into English, and his front matter in advocating for his translation, for Ramusio’s knowledge and for the Cartier account. There is a comparative and intertextual, inter-cultural and inter-linguistic enterprise of many layers.

Florio elaborates on the riches of Canada or New France: “and namely of Saguenay, whiche aboundeth with Golde and other Mettalles, as in the seconde Relation is to be seene” (Florio in Cartier Bji). Cartier’s second relation represents these riches and Florio draws a larger lesson:

All whyche thyngs, ex∣cepte they builde and inhabite, can neuer be atchieued, for as Fraunciscus Lopez di Gomara, and dyuers other Spanishe Authors affirme, the Spanyards neuer prospered or preuailed, but where they planted whych of the Portingales maye also be verifyed, as in the Histories of all theyr Conquests and Discoueries doth manifestly appeare”

(Florio in Cartier Bji).

Not only does Florio appeal to the authority of Spanish authors like Gomara, but he also refers to Portuguese writers, all in the service of connecting prosperity with planting. Spain and Portugal provide examples for England to imitate. After appealing to these Iberian examples and authors, Florio comes to England: “And as there is none, that of right may be more bolde in this enterprice than the Englishmen, the land being first found out by Iohn Gabot the Father, and Sebastian Gabot, one of hys three sonnes, in the yeare 1494. in the name and be halfe of King Henry the sea∣uenth,” and Florio marshals the evidence –

as both by the foresaide Ramusius in his first Volumes, and our owne Chronicles, and Sebastian Gabots letters patents yet extant, and in his Mappe maye be seene: so there is no nation that hath so good righte, or is more fit for this purpose, than they are, who trauayling yearely into those partes with 50. or 60. saile of shippes, might very commodiouslye transporte a sufficient number of men to plant a Colonie in some conuenient Hauen, and also might yeeld them yearly succour, and supply of al things necessary, receyuing againe such commodities as the country doth produce.

(Florio in Cartier Bji).

The Cabotos or Cabots (Gabots in Florio) –Italians like Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci and Verrazzano – sailed for England, and Florio, himself Italian but living in England, wants to learn from Cartier to encourage the English colonization in North America and exploration for a northwest passage to Asia.

Florio also sees why the French found impediments to their exploration and colonization: “And this the Frenchmen had done long since, if first their warres with the Spanyardes, and since their cruell dissentions at home, had not hindered them” (Florio in Cartier Bji). War with Spain and civil war prevented the French from such colonization and exploration, and Florio speaks about Verrazzano:

And Iohannes Varrozzana a Florentine, if he had not beene preuented by death, purposed (as the fore∣sayde Ramusius writeth) to perswade Francis the French King to send forth good store of people to inhabite certaine places of these coastes, where the aire is moste temperate, and the soyle moste fruitfull, with goodly Riuers and Hauens sufficient to harborough any nauie, the inhabitantes of which places might be occasiō to bring many good purposes to effecte, and amongest manye others, to reduce those poore rude and ignorant people to the true worship and seruice of God, and to teache them how to manure and till the ground, transporting ouer Beastes and Cattell of Europe into those large and champion countreys, and finally, in time they might discouer vp into the land, and search, whether among so many Ilands as are there, there be any passage to the Sea of Cataya.

(Florio in Cartier Bji-Bji v).

Florio elaborates on the lost opportunity of France, the king being unable to take up Verrazzano’s proposal to colonize, as both a negative and positive example, something lost and gained, a land worth exploring and settling, and which prompts further exploration to Asia. This theme is in Ramusio, whom Florio invokes again and again, and the reiteration of the exhortation to colonization and exploration is cumulative or at least, to shift metaphors, a drumbeat. Like Spain and Portugal, France provides England with examples to imitate or understand but also room for opportunities or paths not taken.

Moreover, Florio observes the potential of the third part: “And thus much oute of the third Volume of Voyages and Nauigations, gathered into the Italian tongue by Ramusius: whiche Bookes, if they were translated into English by the liberalitie of some noble Personage, our Sea-men of England, and others, studious of Geographie, shoulde know many worthy secrets, whiche hitherto haue beene concealed” (Florio in Cartier Bji v). Translating Ramusio is a key for Florio and others to this whole enterprise of English exploration and settlement overseas. Travel and encounter narratives have economic, social and political dimensions as well as literary and historical aspects. Florio has consulted others: “For, the beste Cosmographers of this age (as I am by the skilfull in those Sciences informed, and as to him that doth diligently consider their Mappes, it shall plainely appeare) haue described Asia, Africa, and America, chiefly by the help of those books” (Florio in Cartier Bji v). Cosmography and cartography –science – have, through books, informed this project of exploration and expansion.

Then Florio catches himself out in a digression but one that really represents his central concern:

But to returne to that from whence I did digresse, althoughe some attemptes of oure Countrey-men haue not had as yet suche successe as was wished, they ought not therefore to bee the slower in this enterprice, for if they were of late contented in their voyage, to haue stayed al the Winter in those colder Countries, if their store of victualles had beene sufficient, howe muche rather ought we nowe in a farre more temperate clime, where Iames Carthier,accompanyed wyth 120. men remained a whole Winter contrary to hys determination when he set out of Fraunce?

(Florio in Cartier Bji v)

Florio represents the slowness of the English enterprise, the climate, especially the cold, and how Cartier, although not intending to spend the winter in Canada, did. Once more, Cartier and France become an example to consider for the English, and Florio translates Ramusio who translated Cartier to make the narrative available to merchants, seamen, and others. Florio sets out to encourage England, to take up Ramusio’s view, part of which is expressed in Cartier, which is one of the accounts in the collection that Ramusio edited:

Thus beseeching God, that this my trauel may take that effect for the which it is meant, I commende the diligent consideration to al such Gentlemen, Merchants, and Pilots, as seeke Gods glory, the aduauncement of their Countrey, and the happy successe, to the prouidence of the Almighty, who in my opinion hath not in vaine stirred vppe the mindes of so many Honourable and Worshipfull persons to the furtheraunce of these commendable and worthy Discoueries.

(Florio in Cartier Bji v)

For Florio, his address ends with a prayer to God and his hope that Florio’s “trauel” will affect pilots, merchants and gentlemen to see the glory of God and the advancement of England as Providence is stirring in the minds of such persons to further these discoveries: Florio leans on adjectives to stress this final message the more. He frames his project of translation to help move forward the English enterprise in divine and providential terms. Florio does this in Oxford and addresses Edmond Bray, Sheriff of Oxford.

Cartier’s own text, in Florio’s translation, has many representations of the Natives. For instance, it says: “These men may very wel & truely be called Wilde, bicause there is no poorer people in the world. For I thinke al that they had togither, besides theyr boates and nets, was not worth fiue souce. They go altogither naked, sauing their priuities, which couered with a little skinne, and certaine olde skinnes that they cast vppon them” (Cartier 19). Here, the inhabitants are poor and wear skins barely covering their private parts, representing recurrent themes in Spanish, Portuguese, French and English narratives of exploration, travel and settlement in the New World and in other lands. Léry also represents Indigenous peoples in the encounter between cultures. The French, like the Spaniards, Portuguese, English and others, read the signs without knowing the Indigenous cultures and languages at the first contact and soon after. They used mediators, go-betweens and interpreters to engage with the Native peoples.

Florio has become part of the literary as the translator of Michel de Montaigne and Cartier, Shakespeare having echoed his translation of Montaigne’s essays, especially “Of the Cannibals,” in The Tempest (Shakespeare 1997; Cuneo 2011; Zaharia 2012). His translation of Cartier has become part of Canadian literature and comparative literature (French and Italian literature) as part of the genre of travel and encounter narratives. These texts cross cultural, linguistic, temporal and spatial boundaries. For instance, the relation of Cartier’s second voyage may have been lost possibly because of the destruction of the civil war in France. Nor do we have Verrazzano’s original report in French for the king, but we have four Italian versions, Ramusio’s version of 1556 being the only one known for years. An English translation of the Italian text in Ramusio appeared in Divers Voyages (1582) and The Principall Navigations (1589) by Richard Hakluyt the Younger. In 1933, René Herval’s French translation from the Italian appeared (Herval). The narrative of Cartier’s third voyage, and Jean Ribault’s account of Florida, in 1562, which Thomas Hacket translated as The Whole and True Dis-coverye of Terra Florida, in 1563, were lost and later relied on English for its transmission. In the 1950s, Suzanne Lussagnet was the first translator of Jean Ribault’s account in French and wondered whether a French original existed (Lussagnet, 1953). André Thevet’s Singularitez (1558) and Cosmographie (1575) are also important texts in this effort. France attempted to establish permanent settlements in Florida, which Spain had claimed, under Jean Ribault in 1562 and under René Laudonnière in 1564.

These texts move in time across space through changes and vicissitudes. Ramusio provided an example for an English translator like Florio and editors and collectors like Hakluyt and Purchas. Florio provides the first English version of parts of Cartier’s narrative about Canada and Purchas gives us the first English selection of Léry’s history of a voyage to Brazil. Columbus prompted the exploration of Newfoundland by Cabot in 1497 and subsequent voyages by the Portuguese and French in the first decades of the sixteenth century. The English slowed down their westward exploration and, like the French after 1541, needed to give their efforts a boost. These travel and encounter narratives helped to promote exploration and settlement in the New World.

Purchas presents, in his chapter III, “Extracts out of the Historie of IOHN LERIVS a Frenchman, who liued in Brasill with Mons. VILLAGAGNON, Ann. 1557. and 58.,” another perspective in the New World. Like Columbus and Cartier, Léry represents the Natives, in this case the Tupinamba in Brazil, and this description becomes part of the network of representation and misrepresentation:

They are not onely altogether ignorant of Scripture, whether it be sacred or profane, but also vtterly without Characters, wherewith they might bee able to write the meaning of the minde. When I first came into those Countries, I writ certaine words and sentences, to acquaint my selfe with their Speech, and read them presently before them. They thinking it to be a iuggling tricke, spake one to another in these words: Is it not a wonder, that this man, who yesterday, knew not so much as one word of our Language, (by the meanes and helpe of this Paper which teacheth him to speake our words) should now so skilfully pronounce them, that they may be vnderstood of vs?

(Léry, “Extracts,” in Purchas 1336).

Léry discusses religion and writing, and says that the Tupinamba are not religious and that they lack writing, so that when he recorded their words in writing, they thought he was performing a “tricke.” The oral and the written become, along with Christianity, central aspects of the encounter. Léry provides ethnological analysis for his observations when living among the Tupinamba in Brazil, and so much of this depends on comparison. Writing becomes a way for Léry to learn the language and pass on his learning to readers and, in time, his work is translated into other languages, like English, so this act of writing becomes triangulated among Europeans and in relation to the Tupinamba and other Indigenous peoples in the New World.

For Léry, a typology or comparison between the Tupinamba and the Europeans is a key method. For instance, he says: “As touching the Policie of the Barbarians, it is scarce credible how well they agree among themselues, being guided only by the light of Nature. Nor may this be spoken, but to their great shame who are instructed in diuine and humane Lawes” (Léry in Purchas 1342). Sometimes Léry, as Montaigne also does after him, uses that likening of Native Americans to Europeans to call the Europeans up short. That comparison can be implicit. Of the Tupinamba, Léry observes: “They exercise naturall charitie abundantly among themselues, for they daily giue one vnto^* another, both Fish, Meale, and Fruits, and also other things: nay, they would be very sorrie, if they saw their neighbours want those things which they haue. They also vse the like liberalitie towards Strangers” (Léry in Purchas 1345). The kindness and the generosity of the Natives to neighbour and stranger are characteristics that Léry admires and, by implication, are something unusual in Europe.

This theme continues. Part of the exchange was Native hospitality: “To be briefe, I am not able to expresse with words, how friendly, and curteously wee were entertained” (Léry in Purchas 1345). Léry employs the topos of inexpressibility – expressing the inexpressible by saying he cannot express it. It is pretending to unsay the sayable – a form of emphasis. Moreover, Léry has admiration for the Tupinamba and stresses European gifts in the exchange:

But wee neuer trauelled farre from home without a Sachell full of Merchandises, which might serue vs in stead of money among those Barbarians. Departing therefore thence, we gaue our Hosts, what wee thought good: to wit, Kniues Sizzers, Pinsers, to the men: Combes, Looking-glasses, Bracelets, and glassen Beades; to the women: and Fish-hookes to the children.

(Léry in Purchas 1345).

Both sides give and benefit. Léry turns his ethnological lens on the French as well as on the Tupinamba, separately and in comparison.

In Tristes Tropiques, Claude Lévi-Strauss recalled his arrival in Rio de Janeiro in 1934: “Once ashore, I ambled along the Avenida Rio Branco, where once the Tupinamba villages stood; in my pocket was that breviary of the anthropologist, Jean de Léry. He had arrived in Rio three hundred and seventy-eight years previously, almost to the day” (Lévi-Strauss, qtd. in Whatley, “Introduction” 1990, xv). Lévi-Strauss, a brilliant French anthropologist, pays tribute to Léry, a pioneering French anthropologist, both in Rio, their work mediated through time and space, through Brazil: the Tupinamba villages are a trace or memory in Rio, that great settler and multicultural city. Janet Whatley, the fine translator of Léry, was able to move the work of Purchas forward, producing a full translation into English in 1990. She explains the significance of Léry: “Jean de Léry's History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil has not been made widely known in the English-speaking world, but those who turn their attention to French literature of New World exploration in the sixteenth century encounter it almost at once, with surprise and gratitude” (Whatley, “Introduction,” xv). Like Whatley and others, I have here and elsewhere tried to call the attention of those who read the English literature of the New World as well as other literatures of the New World to the marvellous contribution of Léry (Honour 1975; Chiapelli 1976; Dickason; Lestringant 1984; Whatley, Une révérence 1987/1988; Whatley, “Editions and Reception of Léry” 1990, 220-224). Whatley shows her appreciation: “For his vivid and subtle ethnography of the Tupinamba Indians and his minute description of the marvelous abundance of their natural setting provide one of the most detailed and engaging of the reports we have of how the New World looked while it was indeed still new; and it is rendered by a generous-minded, acutely observant man with a story-teller's gift” (“Introduction,” xv). This literature, which Cartier and Léry represent, is part of a literature of the New World in French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Indigenous and other languages (Boxer 1973).

This inter-American literature involves Native and settler languages and is triangulated with Europe and beyond. In addition to an analysis of texts and contexts of exploration and expansion and the coming of Europeans again to the New World, after the Norse, I have concentrated on Cartier, especially Florio’s front matter to his translation, and on Léry, particularly on the first translation of a part of his account in Purchas. As we can see, some of the texts are found again and translated or are delayed in being translated. Near the year of the five-hundredth anniversary of the landfall of Columbus in the western Atlantic, Whatley produced what was finally a full and scholarly edition of Léry. The French version of one of the voyages of Cartier was lost and had to be translated from English. Such are the vicissitudes of this literature of travel to the New World. The translation of empire relies on the translation of translation.

Note

• 1
  On related topics in colonialism and postcolonialism that form the context for this article, especially the first ten pages, I have written a number of books and quite a few articles from the 1980s, which I draw on here and which inform my work. This context contributes to the background for my analysis of the English translations of Cartier and Léry, which is the key new focus here.

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  07 Oct 2022
• Date of issue
  May-Aug 2022

History

• Received
  01 Feb 2022
• Accepted
  31 Mar 2022