September 25 - 29, 2006. Travelling Literature in the Middle Age
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Teaching Personnel
Carel ter Haar - Ludwig Maximilians Universität
Ernst Hellgardt - Ludwig Maximilians Universität
Travelling Literature in the Middle Age
This seminar wishes to reach the aim to discuss the huge subject of medieval European travelling literature in its most important aspects at least. Dividing the subject according to different motivations for the activities of travelling in the middle ages, there are especially to be regarded the spheres of trade, politics, pilgrimage, and Christian mission. All of these have their peculiar problems to be regarded carefully. But it is clear too, that the borderlines between them often are crossed, and that should be hold in mind too.
Further, it will be operative for the concept of the seminar, to discern between nonfictional and fictional sorts of texts. Here, once more the problem of drawing borders between the two spheres is given, and should be regarded. Furthermore we project to discuss the question, in which way the medieval wayfarers overcame the difficulties of the several languages, to which they were confronted during their voyages. Here we will study on one the one hand some medieval phrase books designed for wayfarers in foreign environments. On the other hand our interest will be dedicated to the chances of getting bilingual or even multilingual oral interpreters as paid and permanent travelling companions, a subject which is repeatedly mentioned in the medieval travelogues.
Only by the way technical questions of wayfaring will only be asked, such as belonging to means of transportation on shore or on sea, itineraries, cartographic means and so on. But questions like these will not totally be excluded from discussion, and considered as far as they encounter in our texts. We will document the literary sources according to their huge copiousness and also the related learned literature by an elaborate bibliography, which will be put at disposal to the students participating the seminar for their preparation. We did not yet definitely select the sources to be studied in the seminar. But we project to compile them in a reader which also will be put at disposal for the students in time. The sources in their original languages exist in all of the more important medieval European languages: Latin, French, Italian, English, Dutch, and German. Our reader will provide English an German translations as far as they are available beside specimens of the original texts.
In Venice, for a seminar like this, it may be looked at as self-evident that Marco Polo’s travelogues will be emphasized as a favoured subject. So last and not least we provide for a visit to Biblioteca Marziana, where we would like to take the opportunity of looking up to a medieval manuscript of Marco Polo’s travelogue, as it is saved there.
Before our concluding discussion the last session of our seminar will be dedicated to some amusing droll stories in the context of pilgrimage, the kind of which was widely disseminated through Europe in the later middle ages and can give an impression of late medieval disenchanted attitude to pilgrimage.
Contact
Chiara Bianchini - LMU Seminars Coordinator
Tel. + 39 041 2719511
Fax. + 39 041 2719510
