| Abstract | Paper -a:
This paper investigates travel writings from the European Middle Ages as a way of critiquing the conceptualization of the West as 'Latin Christendom', a community bounded by religious identity under the discursive regime of the Church. The meaning of 'Latin Christendom' and writers working within it in relation to the modernity of the present has been the basis of discussions on medievalists' historicist projects for eminent scholars such as Jill Mann and V. A. Kolve. My paper examines the assumption of the European Middle Ages as 'Latin Christendom' by asking, could Europeans from the medieval past imagine a functioning community that does not practice religion? It examines and compares the reports of Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, Franciscan William of Rubruck, and Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela who tell of foreign peoples who do not believe in god, who worship no god, or who have no religious faith. Such reports indicate the Western theistic orientation in constructing the category of religion and point to the political agenda behind European interest in the religious identity and institutions of foreign communities. I suggest that these reports steer readers away from the centrality of theistic discourse and contribute to a new and modern conceptualization of history that is humanistic rather than god-centered. They call into question and challenge the established medieval Christian tradition of God as an innate concept and God as the basis of religious authority. These medieval and early modern accounts of 'godlessness' or 'no religion' identify with the break from total religious control that is conventionally ascribed to modernity. Such an identification has implications for the conceptualization of history in these travel accounts. Instead of God as the sole actor and maker of history, travel writers from Benjamin of Tudela, Marco Polo, to Christopher Columbus shift focus onto the different ways human beings make and act in history.
Paper -b:
The aim of this paper is to read Marco Polo's book in light of the current debate of world literature and to explore new perspectives to shed light on this old book. The paper will be divided into three parts, focusing on the translation and circulation of Marco Polo's book (mainly its several translations in early 20th-century China), and genre(s) of Marco Polo's book (its connections with multiple genres from the West and East, especially with the Chinese genre 'small talk'), and the after lives of Marco Polo's book (literary works in world literature that make use of Marco Polo's story).
Paper -c:
In his narrative, Odoric of Pordenone tells of his travels to Asia in the early 14th century. Odoric's travelogue is not only a factual report, it also elaborates on the fantastic and miraculous marvels Odoric has seen. My paper addresses the question of how alien cultures are characterised that Odoric finds himself confronted with in the outermost regions of the known world. Which phenomena are depicted as marvels? How are they expressed linguistically? Already in the ethnography of antiquity, descriptions of foreign cultures as something miraculous were widespread. My paper traces this approach to presentation back to its predecessors.
|
|---|
