IMC 2010: Sessions
Session 322: The Uses and Abuses of Medieval Travel Narratives
Monday 12 July 2010, 16.30-18.00
| Organiser: | Marianne O'Doherty, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds |
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| Moderator/Chair: | Kim M. Phillips, Department of History, University of Auckland |
| Paper 322-a | Marco Polo and the Dominicans (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Latin, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Sermons and Preaching |
| Paper 322-b | Unreliable Eyewitnesses and Credulous Consumers: Pastiche Narratives of Exotic Journeys in 14th-Century England and Italy (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - French or Occitan, Language and Literature - Italian |
| Paper 322-c | Legitimising England's America: Richard Hakluyt and the Medieval Foundations of England as a Travelling Nation (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Comparative, Medievalism and Antiquarianism |
| Abstract | This session investigates functions that medieval travel narratives could perform for their contemporaries and later audiences. Christine Gadrat investigates the use to which the thoroughly secular Devisement du monde of Marco Polo was put by 14th-century Dominicans in Italy. Marianne O'Doherty examines ambivalent, profane, and comic texts that rework the form and/or content of mendicant 'journey to the East' narratives. Francisco Borge examines Richard Hakluyt's manipulation of narratives from the medieval period in the creation of the idea of the English as a travelling nation with a claim to legitimate 'title' to American lands. Medieval and early modern readers sought and found a very broad range of interpretive, creative, and political possibilities in these flexible and multivalent texts. |