Travel Writing as a Reflection on Crisis: An Exiled Livonian Nobleman Visiting His Homeland

Abstract

The reflection of external and internal crises in premodern travel literature has not been systematically researched, especially in the Eastern European and Nordic context. This case study presents a Latin travel account in an academic speech, Oratio de vitae decore per prudentiam et patientiam comparando et conservando, by the exiled and learned Livonian nobleman Christoph von Sturtz (1557–1602), who visited his homeland in 1599 after 26 years of exile. Contextualizing this hitherto neglected text from the late sixteenth century in its historical and biographical background, and analysing its content and rhetorical strategies, this article demonstrates that travel literature had remarkable potential not only to detect and reflect crises or to react to them properly, but also to analyse the reasons for them, to assess them, to propose guidelines on resolving them, and to prevent them from spreading elsewhere.