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Florida State University Libraries Florida State University Libraries 2016 Seeing the Self: Personal Motivation in Late-Medieval British Travel Accounts Kelly E. (Kelly Elizabeth) Hall Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES SEEING THE SELF: PERSONAL MOTIVATION IN LATE-MEDIEVAL BRITISH TRAVEL ACCOUNTS By KELLY E. HALL A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2016 © 2016 Kelly E. Hall Kelly E. Hall defended this dissertation on May 10, 2016. The members of the supervisory committee were: David F. Johnson Professor Directing Dissertation Charles Brewer University Representative Anne Coldiron Committee Member David Gants Committee Member Nancy Bradley Warren Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my committee members for all their helpful advice and encouragement: David Johnson, Nancy Warren, Charles Brewer, Anne Coldiron, and David Gants. Drs. Coldiron, Gants, and Brewer were recently added to this project, so I especially want to thank them for agreeing to work with a student whom they never had for class. Dr. Warren, you have been unfailingly supportive. Thank you for trusting me to teach your course when you were away at a conference, and thanks for all the lovely dinners in Tallahassee and Kalamazoo. I promise to pay it forward. A special thank you to David Johnson, who has been my staunchest supporter, and who has performed so many kind acts during my time at Florida State: driving a van full of graduate students to New Orleans, attending my sessions at conferences, treating me to a pint in London, and allowing me to go march with the penguins. I enjoyed working with you on several occasions, like when SEMA was in Tallahassee, or when you sponsored the session on Arthurian film at the International Congress. I appreciate your warmth, generosity, and especially your sense of humor. I would like to acknowledge the librarians at West Virginia Wesleyan College, who have been so helpful in providing assistance with various resources and inter-library loans: Carol Smith, Carol Bowman, Brett Miller and Beth Rogers. I want to thank Francis Davey for all his information and correspondence concerning William Wey, which has been invaluable. I would also like to thank Jennifer Raudenbush for her eagle eyes, and valuable editing assistance. This study would not have been possible without the help of all these generous people. Lastly I would like to thank my mom for all her love and support. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ............................................................................................................................................v INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1: TRAVEL AND TRAVEL WRITING IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGES ...............7 CHAPTER 2: INDIVIDUAL AUTHORS AND TRAVEL WRITING AS A MEANS OF EXPRESSION ...............................................................................................................................31 CHAPTER 3: THE THREEFOLD PURPOSE OF THE TRAVELS AND ITINERARIES OF WILLIAM WEY ...........................................................................................................................51 CHAPTER 4: GERALD OF WALES’S WELSH WORKS AS AN ACT OF SELF PROMOTION ................................................................................................................................76 CHAPTER 5: MARGERY KEMPE AND THE FEMALE COMPANIONSHIP SHE DISCOVERED WHILE ABROAD ..............................................................................................96 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................117 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................121 Biographical Sketch .....................................................................................................................136 iv ABSTRACT This dissertation argues that certain late-medieval British travelers intended more than simply to journey from place to place. Their travel writing reveals that they had other goals to accomplish, beyond the expected ones of seeing a new place or visiting a particular holy site. I am using three traveler-authors and their works: William Wey’s The Itineraries of William Wey (1458-62), Gerald of Wales’s The Description of Wales and The Journey Through Wales (c. 1191), and Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe (c.1436). This study begins with two chapters devoted to the nature of travel and travel writing in the Middle Ages, and an introduction of the three travelers. Why and how did people travel, and why did they leave written accounts? I will address two important discussions in the field—the idea of curiosity as a motivator for medieval travelers, and the debate best described as “communitas vs. the individual.” Chapters 3-5 will then address the individual authors. While all three certainly traveled for religious reasons such as pilgrimage or Crusade recruitment, each had multiple objectives for having their travels committed to paper. William Wey wanted to give helpful advice to others, and provide a substitute pilgrimage experience for those back in England who were unable to make the journey themselves. Gerald of Wales was traveling with high-ranking churchmen to encourage the Welsh to go on Crusade, but his ultimate goal was that of self- promotion, both for his literary travails and his future employment opportunities. Margery Kempe didn’t begin her travels with a specific goal in mind, other than to visit popular pilgrimage sites. However, once abroad, she develops a female fellowship—something she often lacked at home, and something she did not find amongst her travel companions. The conclusion will summarize my assessment of each author’s account, proving that each formed his/her identity through travel and travel writing. I will also address what they ultimately gained or lost v by writing their accounts. Wey successfully guides future pilgrims, actual and virtual. Gerald hopes to highlight his own worth, but never gains the position he desires. Kempe is the most successful, finally finding a welcoming, feminine sphere. vi INTRODUCTION Interest in travel writing is on the rise, and has been gaining attention in recent years, both as a widespread, modern genre and as a field of study. Contemporary travel writing has become more popular, and books like Mark Adams’ Turn Right at Machu Picchu and Adam Gopnik’s Paris to the Moon have been bestsellers. Travel writing has so grown over the last two decades that there are now whole subgenres of travel books.1 The field is expanding to combine with memoir, which is also currently popular. The focus is now on the author as much as the exotic locale. Authors who had previously been on the fringe of travel writing—especially women—have enjoyed great success in merging the two fields of travel and memoir. Recent examples would include Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, Rosemary Mahoney’s Down the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman’s Skiff, and Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love. With the recent increase in travel-writing publishing, it is no surprise that the quantity of academic scholarship on travel and travel writing has also increased. Corinne Fowler, Charles Forsdick and Ludmilla Kostova, editors of Travel and Ethics: Theory and Practice would agree: “The study of travel writing has emerged rapidly over the past three decades as a thriving cross- disciplinary field that has made an increasingly active contribution to the internationalization of research practices in the humanities and social sciences.”2 There are now special editions of academic journals devoted solely to travel. An issue of The CEA Critic is titled Teaching Travel 1 Examples include books where the author has bought a house in a foreign country (Frances Mayes’ Under the Tuscan Sun, and Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence), comic tales of international misadventure (Bill Bryson’s Neither Here Nor There and J. Maarten Troost’s Getting Stoned with Savages), and the adventure disaster book (Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm). 2 Corinne Fowler, Charles Forsdick, and Ludmilla Kostova, introduction to Travel and Ethics: Theory and Practice, eds. Corinne Fowler, Charles Forsdick, and Ludmilla Kostova, Routledge Research in Travel Writing Series 7 (New York and London: Routledge, 2014), n. pag. 1 Literature,3 and Hortulus recently devoted an issue specifically to medieval travel.4 Likewise, there are whole journals dedicated to the subject, such as Studies in Travel Writing and Journeys: The International Journal of Travel and Travel Writing.5 As scholarly interest in historic travel texts has increased, so has an appreciation of how medieval travel texts can sometimes be strikingly modern in their concerns. Medieval travelers are sometimes not so far removed from contemporary ones, especially when it comes to western, Christian travelers in the Middle East. One constant fear was that the pilgrims would be robbed, cheated, or swindled in some way. The
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