Traveling Through Text: Message and Method in Late Medieval Pilgrimage Accounts

by Elka Weber

Overview

Traveling through Text compares religious ravel writing by Muslims, Christians and Jews in later Middle Ages. This comparative approach allows us to see that writers in all three religious communities used travel writing in the same way, to shape the perceptions of their readers by asserting the author's authority. The central paradox of religious travel writing is that the travel writer reads about a place, usually in a sacred text, decide to supplement the reading with the empirical experience of visiting and describing the place, and the creates his own descriptive text. But in writing this new book, and in letting his readers know his authorial authority, the travel writer himself is daring the reader to challenge the new text. Is a book ever enough? For societies that value their sacred texts, this question is a challenge. But it is a challenge posed by writers who live firmly in the religious tradition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781135495794
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	02/04/2014
Series:	Studies in Medieval History and Culture
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	379 KB

About the Author

Elka Weber

Table of Contents

A Note about Notes; Series Editor's Foreword; Acknowledgments; Introduction The Significance of Medieval Religious Travel Writing; Chapter One Place; Chapter Two Text; Chapter Three Relationship; Chapter Four Alienation; Chapter Five Sacred Sites; Conclusion;