International Workshop 4th and 5th April 2019 – University of Innsbruck

About the Workshop

With the expansion of trading routes, pilgrimage, and missionary endeavours in the 13th century, Latin travel literature emerged as a distinctive literary genre like never before. The texts within this genre contributed to increasing geographical and ethnographical knowledge about the East, to the evolution of vernacular literature, and to the development of an ever more empirical world view, which ultimately feeds into early Humanism and the Italian Renaissance (e.g. Petrarch). However, despite the signicance of these texts, they have not yet received the scholarly attention they deserve. Many are still awaiting modern critical editions and commentaries and are rarely studied in their own right as literary texts. This neglect appears all the more regretful owing to the fact that so many of these writers were leading theologians and thinkers of their time. With many of these individuals coming out the Dominican and Franciscan Orders, who extolled high learning, these travellers were scholars in their own right and contributed a vast amount to the development of Latin literary forms, styles and strategies during this period. By taking late Medieval Latin travel literature as a discrete literary genre and analysing the ways in which the travellers and pilgrims formulated their travel experiences in text we can learn much about the medieval world view.

Organisation

Susanna Fischer, München (fhfnaan.svfpure@yzh.qr)
Martin Bauer, Innsbruck (znegva.onhre@hvox.np.ng)
Philip Booth, Lancaster (c.obbgu1@ynapnfgre.np.hx)

Conference Venue

Universität Innsbruck, Zentrum für Alte Kulturen
Langer Weg 11, Eingang B
1. Stock, Archäologisches Museum
6020 Innsbruck