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Nature’s Lap: Shipping "the Fruits of the North"

Fri, March 31, 1:30 to 3:00pm, Palmer House Hilton, Floor: Seventh Floor, Burnham 4

Abstract

The Boatman – Casting Ships on the Vistula and Her Tributaries was written by Sebastian Fabian Klonowicz, a Polish poet and writer and published in Krakow in 1595. It is an account of Klonowicz’s personal voyage of 1594, when he sailed along the Vistula River from Warsaw to the Baltic port of Gdańsk with a cargo of grain. From the space of the ship, Klonowicz penned The Boatman in which he described his voyage that triggered a stream of peripatetic ideas. This paper explores the space of the ship as a vehicle of awareness: the ship as a construct or framework set against stormy waters (literally and metaphorically) and the ship as a space of spectatorship. Klonowicz’s The Boatman offers a rare account addressing the implications and effects of trade on the environment.

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