Jean-François Kosta-Théfaine (dir.), Travels and Travelogues in The Middle Ages
New York: AMS Press, 2009, 306 p.
- ISBN : 978-0-404-64168-9
- Prix : $ 96.50
Présentation de l'éditeur :
“Travel in the Middle Ages, it goes without saying, differs
considerably from its twenty-first-century counterpart. Even so,
similarities persist across the centuries—especially the writing or
iconographical representations found in travelogues, [and] the fact
that travel leads to discovery of the other and the elsewhere….The
topics [explored in] this book…could also quite easily be discussed in
works dealing with other, different centuries, including our own. This
is a sign, if one more were needed, of the modernity of the Middle
Ages.” — Introduction.
The interdisciplinary and international affiliations of the
contributors to Travels and Travelogues in the Middle Ages correspond
to the collection's eclectic approach to the field of medieval travel
literature. The sampling of travelers and authors studied herein
include Marco Polo, Odoric of Pordenome, Margery Kempe, and Benedict of
Poland; lands visited and imagined in their works range from Italy to
Song dynasty China, from Mongolia to the Arabian desert, and even to
the fictional realm of hell as it was imagined in the Middle Ages. The
multiplicity of terrains, both literary and geographic, covered in this
volume draw upon medieval and current concepts of iconography,
ethnography, and the relation of self to other, conveying a broad
cultural-historical critical sensibility that will appeal to scholars
of medieval religion, philosophical, literature, and art history.
Sommaire :
JEAN-FRANÇOIS KOSTA-THÉFAINE, “Introduction”
I. Composition, Rewriting, Translations & Iconographical Representation
of Medieval Travelogues
ANA PINTO, “Mandeville's Travels: A Rihla in Disguise”
MARIANNE O'DOHERTY, “‘They are like beasts, for they have no law':
Ethnography and Constructions of Human Difference in Late-Medieval
Translations of Marco Polo's Book”
RICHARD MABER and ANGELA TREGONING, “Conveying the Unimaginable: Odoric
of Pordenone's Travels and Their Vernacular Translations”
JEAN-FRANÇOIS KOSTA-THÉFAINE, “The Pierpont Morgan Library Manuscript
M.723: Illustrations of Hayton's La Fleur des histoires d'Orient”
II. Discovery of the Other−Discovery of the Elsewhere
CHRISTOPHER ROMAN, “Margery Kempe and Italy: Sacred Space and the
Community in Her Soul”
KATRIN RUPP, “Stairway to Hell: Infernal Journeys in Some Old and
Middle English Texts”
CONG ELLEN ZHANG, “Sites, Places, and the Empire: Lu You's Travel on
the Yangzi River in Southern Song China”
III. Travels in Literary Texts
ADRIANO DUQUE, “The Text as Map: Benedict the Pole's Account of the
Carpine Mission to Mongolia (1246-1247)”
WISAM MANSOUR, “Desert Traveling in al-Shanfara's ‘Lamiyyatu'l Arab'”
Bibliography • Contributor Notes • Index