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Ambrosio Bembo. The Travels and Journal of Ambrosio Bembo. Trans. Clara Bargellini. Ed. Anthony Welch. Berkeley, CA: U of California P, 2007. 451 pages.
The Travels and Journal of Ambrosio Bembo represents the collaborative effort of translator Clara Bargellini (National Autonomous University of Mexico) and editor Anthony Welch (University of Victoria) to bring this important and little known seventeenth-century travel narrative to a modern, English-speaking audience. Ambrosio Bembo, of an illustrious Venetian family claiming such distinguished ancestors as Cardinal Pietro Bembo, set out in 1671, at the age of nineteen, on what would be a four-year adventure through the Middle East to the west coast of India and back again, tracing the exact route of his famed predecessor Pietro della Valle. He returned to Venice in 1675, having documented his extraordinary journey along the way. Although his travel journal was most likely meant for publication, it has remained until now unpublished in only two known extant manuscripts: an abridged version owned by Abbé Celotti and a second, complete version purchased by the University of Minnesota in 1964. Welch happened upon Bembo's story when he made use of a single illustration accompanying the manuscript for a separate publication in 1973. After examining the lively but obscure narrative, Welch and Bargellini felt that it was time to make Bembo's voice heard. Their English-language translation offers a valuable addition to the genre of European odeporic literature.
Welch's extensive introduction to the edition provides the reader with a broad yet thorough overview of Bembo's time and place in history. Welch begins by situating this narrative...