Traveling experiences vs. intertextuality: the description of the Philippines in Gemelli Careri’s Giro del Mondo (1699–1700)

Abstract

Between 1699 and 1700, Giovanni Francesco Gemelli Careri published a curious work, the Giro del Mondo, which described his five-year pilgrimage around the world. The author traveled out of sheer curiosity, and the journey was financed by him. Yet the readers have wondered: did Gemelli Careri actually accomplish this journey, or did he just compile this work from other books, weaving an allegedly autobiographical narrative? The part dedicated to the Philippines reveals Gemelli Careri as an experienced traveler and a resourceful collector of accounts, and provides a well-informed and coherent report about life and nature in this archipelago at the close of the seventeenth century, together with glimpses at the author’s methods of composition, based on intense intertextual practices.