SOURCE: Haynes, Jonathan. “The Literary Character of the Relation.” In The Humanist as Traveler: George Sandys's Relation of a Journey begun An. Dom. 1610. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1986, 160 p.

In the following excerpt, Haynes offers a detailed analysis of the literary qualities of Relation.

It is already been said that the Relation is the most “literary” of English Renaissance travel books; the purpose of this chapter is to estimate what this means. The polish of its prose, the poetic translations with which it is studded, and the erudition with which it sometimes bristles are easy enough to notice, but they need to be understood as something more than a literary veneer, however attractive this is thought to be, let alone a layer of pedantry larded onto an original travel journal. It is the Relation's full engagement with humanist learning that is most significant about it in...