Descent into Hell. The Logistics and Performative Rhetorics of Jeronimo Lobo's Crossing the Danakil Desert in 1625

PublishedbyManeyPublishing(c)UniversityofWalesSwansea © Swansea University 2011 DOI 10. 1179/174581511X13063236265082 romance studies, Vol. 29 No. 3, July, 2011, 146–63 ‘Descent into Hell’. The Logistics and Performative Rhetorics of the Jesuit Jerónimo... More

PublishedbyManeyPublishing(c)UniversityofWalesSwansea © Swansea University 2011 DOI 10. 1179/174581511X13063236265082 romance studies, Vol. 29 No. 3, July, 2011, 146–63 ‘Descent into Hell’. The Logistics and Performative Rhetorics of the Jesuit Jerónimo Lobo’s Crossing the Danakil Desert in 1625 Stefan Halikowski Smith Swansea University, UK The party of Portuguese Jesuits that trekked on foot, and with some camels and mules, during one long month in 1625, across the harsh terrain of the Danakil depression in East Africa to their Residence at Fremona in the Ethiopian highlands, accomplished a feat that has not gone unnoticed. In this paper, the aim is to study how a number of logistical difficulties were overcome, as well as elucidate the performative rhetorics which accompanied and indeed brought meaning to the journey. The texts on which this study rests are Jerónimo Lobo’s Itinerário and its various translations, some of his letters, a roteiro, alongside other contemporary sour Less