Intertextuality in Gabriel de Foigny’s "The Southern land known" (1676)

Abstract

In 1676, Gabriel de Foigny, a French ex-Franciscan monk resident in Geneva and converted to calvinism, publishes The southern land known, a travel account and a literary utopia which describes in detail an exemplary society – antipodal regarding Europe. This book discusses a range of pressing questions of his time, mainly concerned to politics, to religion and to philosophy, and dialogues with a large number of works. In this paper, we will discriminate some of these works, that are, essencially: a) utopias, b) travel accounts, c) cosmographies, d) biblical texts and, finally, e) philosophical texts.