The Medieval Invention of Travel / Shayne Aaron Legassie.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Legassie, Shayne, 1979- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Travel writing--Europe, Western--History--To 1500.

Travel writing.

Travel in literature.

Literature, Medieval--History and criticism.

Literature, Medieval.

Pilgrims and pilgrimages in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (317 pages)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2017]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Over the course of the Middle Ages, the economies of Europe, Asia, and northern Africa became more closely integrated, fostering the international and intercontinental journeys of merchants, pilgrims, diplomats, missionaries, and adventurers. During a time in history when travel was often difficult, expensive, and fraught with danger, these wayfarers composed accounts of their experiences in unprecedented numbers and transformed traditional conceptions of human mobility. Exploring this phenomenon, The Medieval Invention of Travel draws on an impressive array of sources to develop original readings of canonical figures such as Marco Polo, John Mandeville, and Petrarch, as well as a host of lesser-known travel writers. As Shayne Aaron Legassie demonstrates, the Middle Ages inherited a Greco-Roman model of heroic travel, which viewed the ideal journey as a triumph over temptation and bodily travail. Medieval travel writers revolutionized this ancient paradigm by incorporating practices of reading and writing into the ascetic regime of the heroic voyager, fashioning a bold new conception of travel that would endure into modern times. Engaging methods and insights from a range of disciplines, The Medieval Invention of Travel offers a comprehensive account of how medieval travel writers and their audiences reshaped the intellectual and material culture of Europe for centuries to come.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Travail and Travel Writing

Part One: Subjectivity, Authority, and the "Exotic"

1. Exoticism as the Appropriation of Travail

2. Travail and Authority in the Forgotten Age of Discovery

Part Two: Pilgrimage as Literate Labor

3. Memory Work and the Labor of Writing

4. The Pilgrim as Investigator

Part Three: Discovering the Proximate

5. Becoming Petrarch

6. The Chivalric Mediterranean of Pero Tafur

Coda: Beyond 1500; or, Travel's Labor's Lost

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 22. Okt 2019)

ISBN:

9780226446622

022644662X

OCLC:

979416991