Publication Date
11-2024
Keywords
medieval travel, imaginary travel, travel literature
Abstract
Literary fantasy has often served as a meaningful reflection of historical, material, or political developments, and events. This also applies to many works from the European Middle Ages. While popular opinion continues to assume that most medieval people were home-bound, the very opposite can almost be claimed, especially for the late Middle Ages. After the Crusades, the stream of pilgrims to the Holy Land grew tremendously, but many other people were on the roads as well, whether for economic, religious, or political reasons. Constructive contacts between West and East only developed in the course in time, but the basic foundations for those were established already in high and late medieval romances that often presented the protagonists traveling far beyond the traditional boundaries of medieval Europe. Admittedly, we cannot simply claim that the fictional texts served as the instructional manuals for people’s actual activities. But, as this article will indicate, we are certainly on solid ground concerning the imaginary projections of potential journeys to the eastern Mediterranean, the North African coast, the Middle East (Persia), and further on that might have served well as the critical models for subsequent travelers in reality. Hence, we could reasonably identify many authors of courtly and other romances as mental mapmakers who outlined with their narratives what journeys individuals could potentially carry out in the future.
Recommended Citation
Classen, Albrecht
(2024)
"Mobility in the Middle Ages - Literary Evidence as a Mental Map for Travel Imaginations: A Critical Reconsideration of Modern Myths about the Past,"
Quidditas: Vol. 45, Article 5.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/rmmra/vol45/iss1/5
Included in
Comparative Literature Commons, History Commons, Philosophy Commons, Renaissance Studies Commons
