Nasty, Brutish, and Long: Medieval Travel Writing

Sponsoring Organization(s)

Medieval Association of Place and Space (MAPS)

Organizer Name

Matthew Boyd Goldie

Organizer Affiliation

Rider Univ.

Presider Name

Matthew Boyd Goldie

Paper Title 1

Mapping Purgatory: Saint Patrick's Purgatory as Deep Map

Presenter 1 Name

Helen Davies

Presenter 1 Affiliation

Univ. of Rochester

Paper Title 2

Mapping the Houses of The House of Fame

Presenter 2 Name

Sarah Stanbury

Presenter 2 Affiliation

College of the Holy Cross

Paper Title 3

Viewing on the Move: Cairo in the Eyes of Italian Travelers, 1354–1565

Presenter 3 Name

Niall Atkinson

Presenter 3 Affiliation

Univ. of Chicago

Paper Title 4

Notes on Medieval Ecotourism

Presenter 4 Name

Shayne Aaron Legassie

Presenter 4 Affiliation

Univ. of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Start Date

10-5-2019 3:30 PM

Session Location

Fetzer 2030

Description

“In the Middle Ages, travel was nasty, brutish, and long.” So begins Shayne Legassie’s important new study, The Medieval Invention of Travel. Legassie’s argument is that the late Middle Ages began the genre of travel writing with its narratives about the Mongolian Empire, pilgrimage accounts of voyages to the Holy Land, chivalric adventures within the Mediterranean, and letters and other writings about real and imagined treks within Europe. Papers address travel writing as a genre as well as the varieties of travel writing in the late Middle Ages, and they may react explicitly to Legassie’s arguments—Matthew Boyd Goldie