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George Psalmanazar

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George Psalmanazar (c. 1680-1763) was French but passed himself off as a native of Formosa. He exploited total European ignorance of Asia to make a career out of this passing-off.

He may have inspired Jonathan Swift to invent Lemuel Gulliver. As with many notable Baroque figures, Psalamanazar published traveloques of doubtful authenticity, and literally invented his identity, which was seemingly a sport or art at the time.

According to Jack Lynch of Rutgers, "After an onerous Jesuit education, he resolved to travel. Partly to secure safe and cheap passage through France, and partly for a lark, he passed himself off as a mendicant Irish Catholic on a pilgrimage to Rome. After forging a passport to that effect, he stole a pilgrim's cloak from a church and set out.

The Irish identity quickly proved troublesome: surrounded by people who actually knew something about Ireland, Psalmanazar perpetually ran the risk of being exposed. He looked, therefore, to the other side of the world, where that risk was negligible. And so he became a native of the island of Formosa, modern Taiwan, under the control of the great emperor of Japan. A brief tenure in the military brought him some minor celebrity among the officers, who introduced the charming faux Formosan to the beau monde, and he was soon hooked. In 1703, accompanied by a Scottish clergyman, he arrived in England and represented himself as a Formosan. Once accepted as an exotic Oriental, he was fêted by all the literary and philosophical lions of the day.

Never having been to Formosa, nor even having met anyone who had been, he spent his time spinning tales about his homeland and not only spinning tales, but living them. He drew attention by eating his meat raw and absurdly heavily spiced, because that's the way they eat in Formosa. He slept in a chair with a lamp burning, so observers assumed he studied through the night without ever sleeping, because that's the way they do it in Formosa." And so on.

Mutability of identity, the ways geography could be presented, and the roots of anthropology in curiosity about other cultures, and the passing off of entertainment as science, are useful Baroque themes illustrated by his case.

See also: Don Quixote, Lemuel Gulliver, William Shakespeare and others on the list of notable Baroque figures who were either claimed to be historical figures in some limited context, or real people about whom much doubt exists as to their identity.