Travel in all its myriad forms –pilgrimage, trade, scholarship, adventure- expanded the mental and physical limits of the medieval world. Medieval Mediterranean travelers, both fictional and real, narrated their processes of self-discovery and epistemological fulfilment through travel as well as their encounters with the “Other” in locales as varied and exotic to the Western audiences as the Holy Land, the coast of Africa, the Mongol steppes or the Byzantine and Ottoman empires. In all chronological periods travel, military conquest and trade through the Mediterranean placed Western European citizens and merchants in contact with Islamic and eastern technology and culture. Documents and maps which describe such contacts consistently illustrate the converging and pragmatic dynamics of cultural acceptance in the neutral milieu of the Mediterranean Sea. This course will be devoted to the study of a variety of such documents and exchanges. Through the study o f travel narratives and travelogues (from Italian travelers such as Marco Polo or Pietro de la Valle to Spanish travelers such as Benjamin de Tudela and Pero Tafur or diplomatic envoys to Turkey such as Ghiselin de Busbecq) the course will bring to the fore the relevance of the cultural and commercial imprint of the Islamic East in any account of the development of the West.
Professor: Montserrat Piera (abre em nova janela)
Instituição: Temple University (abre em nova janela)
Língua ministrada: Inglês
Carga horária:
Aceita alunos de graduação e pós-graduação.