Beyond Turner: anthropological approaches and medieval pilgrimage texts

Booth, Philip ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5001-5679 (2023) Beyond Turner: anthropological approaches and medieval pilgrimage texts. In: To Jerusalem and Beyond: interdisciplinary approaches to the study of Latin travel literature, C.1200-1500. Das Mittelalter. Perspektiven mediävistischer Forschung. (19). Heidelberg University Publishing, Heidelberg, Germany, pp. 161-188. ISBN 9783968221304 (hardcover); 9783968221298 (ebook)

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Abstract

Recent years have seen a significant growth within the field of pilgrimage studies. Mainly the purview of anthropologists and ethnographers, pilgrimage studies, and increasingly the interrelated field of tourism studies, are able to provide scholars of medieval Holy Land pil­grimage with a rich array of analytical tools which we can use. This chapter presents some of the more significant de­velopments within the field of pilgrimage / tourism studies and by taking the examples of two medieval Holy Land pil­grims, Riccoldo of Monte Croce and Felix Fabri, attempts to demonstrate ways in which these developments can be put to use. It suggests that we should adopt more fluid un­derstandings of pilgrimage and looks at how the concept of the ‘gaze’, developed from Foucauldian ideas by John Urry (1990) and others since can serve as a useful model for understanding the role of sight and encounters with the ‘Other’ in medieval pilgrimage texts. More importantly, it advocates for a diversification in our approaches as me­dievalists and signals pilgrimage studies as a worthwhile avenue for future exploration.