Development of literary form and idiom throughout the Christian West from the first to the fifteenth century.

Contrary to modern expectations, medieval people did a lot of travelling—for business or pleasure, out of curiosity or hunting for knowledge, as tourists or explorers, alone or with others in armies, bands of pilgrims or in thrall to human traffickers—walking the highways and byways of the known world or sailing its high seas, from Ireland to Jerusalem to Africa, India and China. As they went, these travellers carried with them their own “baggage”: their cultural origins, assumptions and beliefs which shifted kaleidoscopically in relation to the world they encountered, a world transformed in turn by their visit, and brought home in stories, in books we, along with their contemporaries, can read. Looking closely at medieval maps, manuscript illuminations, documents and personal letters (the “trash” of the Cairo genizah, for instance), guides for sight-seers and, especially, travel narratives of Christians, Muslims and Jews among others (including the famous accounts of Marco Polo and John Mandeville), we will aim to see more clearly the medieval world as it was seen by those who passed through it—its landscapes, its customs, its communities, its peoples, including our guides themselves, forced to look in a foreign mirror—risking our own transformation by the vicarious trip abroad. No prior knowledge is assumed or expected for this course, which fulfills the pre-1800 requirement.

Repeat Rules

Requirements class fulfills