The Viaggio in Inghilterra of a Viaggio in Oriente: Odorico da Pordenone's Itinerarium from Italy to England

Abstract

This article compares trends in the reception of the fourteenth-century travel narrative (Relatio) of the Franciscan Friar Odorico da Pordenone in Italy and England before the end of the fifteenth century. Principally using physical evidence for the intended audience and actual reception of the Relatio's surviving manuscript witnesses, this article draws a sharp distinction between a text circulating in Italy predominantly among lay, middle class, vernacular-literate readers and one attentively read in England by Latinate, religious, and scholarly audiences.