Traveling Narratives: Aspects of Movement in the Western Middle Ages

2023/03/30

The cover of this book features a photograph of a medieval stained-glass window depicting pilgrims heading to the holy site of Canterbury. The photo was taken at Canterbury Cathedral by Professor Takami Matsuda of the Faculty of Letters, Keio University. Many readers will likely recall Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales" from the keywords "Canterbury," "pilgrimage," and "the Middle Ages." This work is written in the form of a frame story, where pilgrims of various professions and social statuses share stories while traveling toward Canterbury, and it encompasses all the genres representative of Western medieval literature.

Would it be too presumptuous to overlay this travel narrative with the collection of essays we have compiled this time? The 15 contributors are all travelers in medieval studies, and they moved forward like a group heading toward a holy site with the common goal of publishing a commemorative collection to celebrate the achievements of Professor Matsuda, who will retire at the end of March 2023. Professor Matsuda, who has led medieval studies for many years, has discussed medieval European literature from a wide range of perspectives and in an interdisciplinary manner. His publications and papers are countless, including "Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales: Adventures in Genre" (Keio University Press, 2019) from the "One Book to Decipher the World" series, which he founded. This collection was compiled with contributions from his students and colleagues, using "travel"—a theme important to the professor—as a common axis.

It may not be widely known that Europe from the Middle Ages to the early modern period was a fluid society formed by various forms of "movement." Furthermore, literary research of this era covers not only literary works in the narrow sense but also diverse texts such as sermons, religious books, and practical manuals, with a broad scope and loose definitions. The purpose of this book's "journey" is to delve into the nature of this fluidity and diversity that characterized European society from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period, through the analysis of discourses on "travel" depicted through text and visual representations, as well as the analysis of traveling ideas and concepts. We hope that through this publication, the charm of the medieval world reaches as many readers as possible. For since ancient times, it has been books that have carried the accumulation and dissemination of experiences brought about by travel.

Traveling Narratives: Aspects of Movement in the Western Middle Ages

Satoko Tokunaga (Co-editor) and Yufu Onuma (Co-editor)

Chisen Shokan

310 pages, 4,950 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.