Fact and Fiction

But Psalmanazar did not make everything up: his book includes material from two texts about Formosa that were available in England in 1704: A Short Account of the Island of Formosa by George Candidius (1704) and Descriptio Regni Japoniae et Siam by Bernardus Varenius (1649). Weaving fact into fiction made Psalmanazar’s fabrications seem more authentic, and he also employed this strategy in his visual descriptions.

Figure 1 is one of the most impressive images from An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa: a large fold-out print that shows a religious procession on Formosa. Several details of this image, like the elephants, appear to have been borrowed from the picture of a Vietnamese funeral procession in Jean-Baptiste Tavernier’s Recüeil De Plusieurs Relations Et Traitez Singuliers Et Curieux (1679) (Fig. 2).