Libri in viaggio e libri di viaggio: Tyssot de Patot nel bagaglio di Giacomo Casanova

What did Giacomo Casanova carry with him during his relentless travels across Europe? What readings inspired his adventurous and wandering mind? A letter from 1760 leads us to the Voyages et avantures de Jacques Massé, published between 1714 and 1717 with the false date of 1710, authored by Simon Tyssot de Patot. This, in turn, connects to another of his books, the account of a journey to the center of the Earth found in La vie, les avantures, & le voyage de Groenland du révérend Père Cordelier Pierre de Mesange (1720)—a theme destined to resurface many years later in Casanova’s utopian work, the Icosameron (1787).