CONGRESS CANCELED Neither Here nor There: The In-Betweenness of Venice in Late Medieval Pilgrims' Accounts

Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University

Description

On the way to the Holy Land, most roads lead through Venice. But the Laguna city is not just a stop along the pious journey. It is a point of departure and return, a place of waiting to leave and wanting to stay. A place where the alien meets the familiar, where splendor meets devotion, Venice is a place of in-betweens. This panel explores late Medieval pilgrims’ views on this dazzling city between sea and land, heaven and world, by looking into travelogues and chronicles in different languages from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. With a major interest in the narrative construction of place and space, this panel aims at structuring a comparison between different European (German, Italian, French) pilgrims’ experiences of Venice. Both a ‘topographic’ challenge for the wanderer and a literary object for the writer, Venice stands out in this period for the emergence of a distinctive imaginary. Building on the works by Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan, Franco Cardini, Edward Muir and Shayne Legassie, the panel further seeks to assess the efficacy of the Venetian government in involving the pilgrims into the deployment of a municipal myth, while exploring interlocking practices of cartography and visual figuration. Keywords: Venice, pilgrimage, travel literature, German, Italian, French

Toni Veneri

 
May 9th, 10:00 AM

CONGRESS CANCELED Neither Here nor There: The In-Betweenness of Venice in Late Medieval Pilgrims' Accounts

Fetzer 2040

On the way to the Holy Land, most roads lead through Venice. But the Laguna city is not just a stop along the pious journey. It is a point of departure and return, a place of waiting to leave and wanting to stay. A place where the alien meets the familiar, where splendor meets devotion, Venice is a place of in-betweens. This panel explores late Medieval pilgrims’ views on this dazzling city between sea and land, heaven and world, by looking into travelogues and chronicles in different languages from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. With a major interest in the narrative construction of place and space, this panel aims at structuring a comparison between different European (German, Italian, French) pilgrims’ experiences of Venice. Both a ‘topographic’ challenge for the wanderer and a literary object for the writer, Venice stands out in this period for the emergence of a distinctive imaginary. Building on the works by Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan, Franco Cardini, Edward Muir and Shayne Legassie, the panel further seeks to assess the efficacy of the Venetian government in involving the pilgrims into the deployment of a municipal myth, while exploring interlocking practices of cartography and visual figuration. Keywords: Venice, pilgrimage, travel literature, German, Italian, French

Toni Veneri