A ‘science of dreams’

Abstract

Sir Walter Ralegh mentions Mandeville twice: once in The Discoverie of Guiana and again in The History of the World. Like anthropologists later, he considers the 'fables' of The Travels as meaningful narratives that can be explained rationally, and it is no surprise that his reading of the Acephali was current until the nineteenth century. This chapter discusses an example of the Acephali that shows how by resorting to an early source Ralegh manages to distance himself from the iconographical and fabulous tradition. Ralegh's travel narrative is based on epistemological strategies that adumbrate in many ways the Baconian method, even if it is a far cry from the factual objectivity of the Royal Society experimentalists. Critics have often dismisses Ralegh as a mere dabbler in natural history and travel literature, but Ralegh is one of the finest readers and interpreters of his time, capable of mastering very distinct hermeneutic systems.