Travel in the Middle Ages: between geography and imagination

Department of History, School of History and Cultures

College of Arts and Law

Details

Code 21542

Level of study Second Year

Credit value 20

Semester 1&2

Module description

Ideas travel with people, and people travel with different aims: exploration, conquest, mission, war, commerce and pilgrimage. The Middle Ages has left a rich patrimony of sources related to travel. Chronicles, commercial registers, narrative accounts, sermons and letters. The course will begin by analysing the idea of the world, the `mental geography’ of Medieval people, then will move onto the concept of travel and its religious and philosophical implications. Afterwards, it will explore the differences in ways of travelling (routes, means of transport), purposes, and perceptions of the space and of the diversity encountered in the individuals’ experience of travel.