Washington and Lee University
This course explores the idea and practice of pilgrimage in Christian Europe from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance. Why was pilgrimage important and what did it offer early Christians? What made certain space sacred? And how did literary portrayals transform the significance of pilgrimage? Sources include first-person accounts and travelogues (such as the autobiography of the fifteenth century visionary Margery Kempe); saints' lives; visual art and architecture; and literature, including Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Langland's Piers Plowman, and Spenser's Faerie Queene. We will also study several popular destinations in Europe and Asia, including Canterbury, Compostela, and Jerusalem, and pay particular attention to how the representations of pilgrimage changed in Renaissance art after the Reformation. Medieval texts will be read in modern English translation.
Curtis Jirsa (English)
