This is sample from the essay ‘Travel Writing and the Far East, c.1245-c.1500’
by Dr Kim Phillips, Department of History, University of Auckland
Medieval Travel Writing. © Adam Matthew Digital Ltd. 2008

‘Travel Writing and the Far East, c.1245-c.1500
Dr Kim Phillips, Department of History, University of Auckland

For Europeans at the turn of the thirteenth century the distant East had long been a place from which fearsome peoples came. The fourth to eleventh centuries had seen Huns, Avars, Magyars and Seljuk Turks sweep in from regions east of the Caucasus to devastate the West; thus the Mongol armies which struck terror in the hearts of the Christians of Russia and Hungary from the early 1220s were the latest in a long series of ferocious strangers. Led by the sons of Genghis Khan (d. 1227), they appeared on the eastern fringes of Europe like something from a nightmare in the early 1220s as attested by the chronicler of Novgorod: ‘The same year [1224], for our sins, unknown tribes came, whom no one exactly knows, who they are, nor whence they came out, nor what their language is, nor of what race they are, nor what their faith is; but they call them Tartars.’[1].

From the mid 1240s this movement of peoples east to west halted, paused, then like a great grinding cog reversed and began slowly to move in the other direction. The Orient beyond the Russian borders and the Holy Land became a region to which a Latin Christian might travel not only in imagination but also in reality, although the journey would be long and arduous. While numbers travelling west to east would be relatively few before the great missionary efforts of the sixteenth century and the formation of large trading companies from the early seventeenth century, the late medieval voyages of ambassadors, missionaries and merchants helped transform the distant East in European thought. As Mary Baine Campbell explains in her seminal study of premodern European travel literature, Asia had dominated European perceptions of foreign lands and distant peoples since at least the late antique period. Africa – Islamic in the north and cut off by impenetrable deserts or hazardous sea voyages to the south – played a far smaller role, while the Americas were unknown to most Europeans before the late fifteenth century:

[F]or the period under discussion, the various landscapes of Asia were the most constitutively alien. Although Christopher Miller’s recent book, Blank Darkness, makes a strong case for Africa as Europe’s Other, there is no continuous corpus of travel accounts during the Middle Ages that take on Black Africa as an experienced and witnessed place. . . . Asia was both sufficiently “known” (witnessed, experienced) and unknown (Other) to provide the ground for dynamic struggles between the powers of language and the facts of life.[2]

Asia loomed large in the medieval imagination, just as it weighed down upon the foreshortened Europe and truncated Africa on the mappae mundi of the age.

Medieval travel writing underwent dramatic developments as the numbers of Europeans travelling beyond the Islamic East grew from the mid-thirteenth century on. The itineraries, relations, letters and geographies produced by John of Plano Carpini and his successors were, of course, by no means the first examples of travel literature produced by medieval European authors. The pilgrimage tradition had produced guidebooks and narratives of spiritual journeys to the Holy Land and other major sacred sites since Egeria wrote her narrative in the fourth century, while from the late eleventh century the crusades to the Holy Land inspired a number of authors to chronicle their experiences. Ethnographic works were represented in the output of Gerald of Wales and Adam of Bremen, and tales of the voyage of St Brendan – a sixth-century Irish monk reputed to have undertaken extensive journeys in the North Atlantic – circulated widely in manuscript form.[3]. Late medieval accounts of expeditions to Asia were therefore a continuation of an already established literary form, but they mark a new flowering. The reading public’s fascination for travel literature which endures strongly to the present has its beginning with the works produced from the mid-thirteenth century.

Early- and high-medieval travel literature had been dominated by preoccupations with the sacred and the exotic. While these themes by no means disappeared in late medieval travel writing they were partially displaced or supplemented by a new need: the hunger for information. Travel writing became, above all else, a source of knowledge about the world, its natural features, and its peoples. This, I suggest, is the most distinctive element of late medieval travel writing on the Far East.[4]. As will be discussed in a moment, other scholars have seen the shift towards more personalised or subjective narratives – a foretaste of the first-person experiential emphasis of modern travel writing – as a significant feature of late medieval travelogues, but in my view this is a more minor development which would not reach fruition until the early modern era. The remainder of this essay will explore in more detail the notion of travel writing as a literary genre, consider some ways that medieval travel writing has been interpreted and sometimes misrepresented, and offer a new framework for analysis.

II

‘Travel Writing Studies’ is a flourishing new field of scholarship, which has only come to prominence over the last decade or so. Academic associations and centres such as the U.S.-based ‘International Society for Travel Writing’, Nottingham Trent University’s  ‘Centre for Travel Writing Studies’, and the ‘Centre de Recherches sur les Littératures de Voyage’ at the Sorbonne have sprung up,[5]. specialist journals including Studies in Travel Writing and Journeys: The International Journal of Travel and Travel Writing are now available, and there has been a small explosion of monographs, essay collections and conferences dedicated to travel literature. To call Travel Writing Studies a discipline would not be quite accurate, however, as it is avowedly interdisciplinary, drawing on contributions from literary scholars, historians, geographers, anthropologists and others. The boundaries between the ‘academic’ and the ‘popular’ seem more fluid than in established disciplines also: the ISTW is directed at travel authors and publishers as well as scholars, while Journeys reviews books by authors such as Tim Mackintosh-Smith and Giles Milton alongside its scholarly articles, critical essays and reviews of academic works. Travel writing’s lack of firm literary borders provides an appropriate mimesis of its purpose, to record movement between fixed locations by seekers of new forms of knowledge and experience.

One essential task in the formation of a new scholarly field is the definition of its object of study. Some energies have been expended in attempting to define travel writing as a genre, and indeed in querying whether it is a genre at all. A distinction seems to be drawn between the form of a text and its content. ‘Travel writing’ should contain matter drawn from actual or imagined journeys, even though in some cases the journey itself is not described. The style or form in which that content is expressed may, however, vary substantially, and include itineraries or travelogues, letters, diaries, guidebooks, and geographic, ethnographic or chorographic description. Several commentators express this idea:

This is a genre composed of other genres. . . . It is a genre that confronts, at their extreme limit, representational tasks proper to a number of literary kinds . . . . Some of these demands are familiar to the ‘participant-observers’ of ethnography, others to writers and critics of fictional realism or historiography.[6].

Travel writing feeds from and back into other forms of literature. To try to identify boundaries between various forms would be impossible and I would be deeply suspicious of any attempt at the task.[7].

[Travel writing] is not a genre, but a collective term for a variety of texts both predominantly fictional and non-fictional whose main theme is travel.[8].

Part of the problem appears to be what is meant by ‘genre’. Does it refer primarily to the style of the text or its thematic content? Hans Robert Jauss’s concept of genre as the ‘horizon of expectations’ readers bring to a text would encompass both, but in the case of travel writing it seems unproductive to focus too much on form.[9]. Joan-Pau Rubies, a specialist in late-medieval and Renaissance travel writing, focuses on content in offering a flexible yet precise definition:

‘[Travel literature] can be defined as that varied body of writing which, whether its principal purpose is practical or fictional, takes travel as an essential element for its production. Travel is therefore not necessarily a theme, nor even a structuring element, within the body of literature generated by travel. . . . The crucial point is that the writer, who could easily be an armchair writer, ultimately relied on the materials and authority of first-hand travellers.’ [10].

This rather capacious formulation has the virtue of applicability to travel texts from any era or cultural context and is better suited to describing late medieval travel writing than definitions suggested by specialists in modern travel books. It does not require ‘travel writing’ to provide a descriptive first-person account of a journey undertaken, for example, as Jan Borm and Tim Youngs do:

[The travel book is] any narrative characterised by a non-fiction dominant that relates (almost always) in the first person a journey or journeys that the reader supposes to have taken place in reality while assuming or presupposing that author, narrator and principal character are but one or identical.[11].

[T]ravel narrative is always controlled by the first person singular. Predictably, therefore, questions of identity are frequently to the fore, suggesting the degree to which physical travel often tends, in its writing, to become symbolic of interior journeys of the mind or soul.[12].

Mary Baine Campbell in The Witness and the Other World also prefers the subjective perspective as a definitive trope of travel writing. This is despite the fact that some of the medieval texts she chooses for close analysis – such as The Wonders of the East – defy her own stated preference for narratives in the first- or second-person, with emphasis on the journey taken and the self as rhetorical presence.[13]. While many late medieval travel texts dealing with the distant East do involve a first-person narrator who undertook a journey, or pretended to have done so, some take the form of a descriptio of distant lands more than an itinerarium through them. This is particularly the case for Hayton (or Hetoum) of Armenia’s La flor des estoires de la terre d’Orient (c. 1307), John de Cora’s Le livre de l’estaat du Grant Caan (c. 1330) and Jordanus of Severac’s Mirabilia descripta (c. 1330), but even Marco Polo’s book (original c. 1298) is more chorography than travelogue. Francesco Balducci Pegolotti undertook no journey himself, yet his account of the merchant’s route to Asia (c. 1340) can be understood as ‘travel writing’ according to Rubies’ definition as it is based on information provided by actual travellers . The odd-one-out among the items in the present collection is the anonymous Letter of Prester John, the origins of which remain obscure but which is not known to be based on the testimony of actual travellers.[14]. Despite its lack of perfect fit with Rubies’ classificatory scheme the Letter’s importance necessitates inclusion in this collection. Its description of a mythical and marvellous eastern kingdom ruled by a Christian priest-king circulated widely in manuscript form and numerous languages, providing an imaginative basis for later perceptions of eastern lands and possibly even inspiring a number of actual voyages, such as the early Franciscan embassies to the Mongols.[15]. Many medieval travel writers, including Marco Polo, Jordanus of Severac, Odoric of Pordenone and ‘Sir John Mandeville’ wrote of Prester John as a real person – historic or still living – in their accounts of the East.

The truth-status of travel narratives is also a key component of their definition. Whether or not a narrative is actually true – or, rather, has its basis in lived experience and observation – is irrelevant; what matters is that readers (or most readers) of a travel text believe in its veracity. In Jan Borm’s words, a ‘referential pact’ exists between author and reader; citing Jauss, the ‘horizon of expectation’ a reader brings to a work of travel writing includes the expectation that it is based to a greater or lesser degree on real experience.[16]. While there will always be problems with applying these principles to every individual work of travel writing, as Borm acknowledges, the idea of a ‘non-fiction dominant’ marking the boundaries of travel literature is helpful as a way of distinguishing it from avowedly fictional works which also take travel as a key theme or structuring element – such as Moby Dick or Heart of Darkness, or, thinking of the medieval period, quest narratives such as the search for the Holy Grail. Modern attempts to differentiate between ‘travel writing’, ‘travel book’, ‘travelogue’, and ‘travel literature’ are too fine, however, to be applied with any utility to medieval examples and so will not be attempted here.

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Endnotes:

1. The Chronicle of Novgorod, 1016-1471, trans. Robert Michell and Nevill Forbes, Camden Society Publications, 3rd series, vol. 25 (London, 1914), p. 64.

2. Mary B. Campbell, The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400-1600 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 3.

3. Paul Zumthor, ‘The Medieval Travel Narrative,’ New Literary History, 25 (1994), 809-24; Dorothy A. Bray, ‘Brendan’s Voyage, St.,’ and Mary B. Campbell, ‘Travel Writing in Europe and the Mediterranean Regions,’ in John Block Friedman and Kristen Mossler Figg (eds), Trade, Travel, and Exploration in the Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland, 2000), pp. 71-2, 613-616; Robert Bartlett, Gerald of Wales, 1146-1223 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982).

4. This essay deals only with narratives of travel to regions beyond the Islamic East, including Mongolia, India, China, and South-East Asia, which are covered by the modern term ‘Far East’ for convenience.

5. The French, it should be noted, were in the lead here, as the Sorbonne centre was actually established in 1984. The ISTW was founded in 1997 and NTU’s centre in 2003.

6. Campbell, Witness and the Other World, p. 6.

7. Tim Youngs, Travellers in Africa: British Travelogues, 1850-1900 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), p. 8.

8. Jan Borm, ‘Defining Travel: On the Travel Book, Travel Writing and Terminology,’ in Perspectives on Travel Writing, ed. Glenn Hooper and Tim Youngs (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), p. 14.

9. Hans Robert Jauss, ‘Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory,’ New Literary History, 2 (1970), pp. 7-37, esp. p. 12.

10. Joan-Pau Rubies, ‘Travel Writing as a Genre: Facts, Fictions and the Invention of a Scientific Discourse in Early Modern Europe,’ Journeys, 1 (2000), pp. 5-35, quote at p. 7, italics added.

11. Borm, ‘Defining Travel,’ p. 17, original italics removed. By ‘dominant’ Borm refers to an idea of Hans Robert Jauss which enables one to gather together works of different genres because they share dominant features. ‘Thus,’ says Borm, ‘while certain genres consist of a mix of different genres and forms of writing, their identity can be defined in terms of dominant aspects,’ ‘Defining Travel,’ p. 17.

12. Tim Youngs, ‘Introduction,’ Studies in Travel Writing, 1 (1997), pp. 1-8, quote at p. 5

13. ‘Travel literature is defined here as a kind of first-person narrative, or at least a second-person narrative (as in the travel guide: “thence you come to a pillar near the chamber of the holy sepulchre”)’, Witness and the Other World, p. 5. The point is elaborated in her justification for beginning with Egeria’s Peregrinatio ad terram sanctam: ‘Other critics treat the works of Herodotus and Ctesias as the first exemplars of European travel literature because they describe distant places on the basis (partly) of firsthand experience. But there is a crucial difference between such works as theirs and Egeria’s: the travelling historians, geographers, and navigators of classical and late antiquity do no dwell in their books on journey or the self, but only on the data accumulated during the journey. Journey for them is a method of research; the self is a respectable “source” but not a subject whose human nature is or should be emphasized. . . . [S]elf remains problematic for Egeria, but becomes necessary as a rhetorical presence. And the idea of pilgrimage renders the journey important as journey,’ Witness and the Other World, p. 15.

14. Bernard Hamilton presents the thesis that the Letter was produced for imperial propagandistic purposes on behalf of Frederick Barbarossa, ‘Prester John and the Three Kings of Cologne’, reprinted in Charles F. Beckingham and Bernard Hamilton, eds, Prester John, the Mongols and the Ten Lost Tribes (Aldershot: Variorum, 1996), pp. 171-85.

15. Friedrich Zarncke, ‘Der Brief des Priesters Johannes an den byzantischen Kaiser Emanuel’, in Abhandlungen der philologisch-historischen Classe der königlich sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften 7 (Leipzig, 1879), reprinted in Beckingham and Hamilton, eds, Prester John and the Ten Lost Tribes; Vsevolod Slessarev, Prester John: The Letter and the Legend (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1959), pp. 34-8; Martin Gosman (ed.), La Lettre du Prétre Jean: édition des versions en ancient français  et en ancien Occitan (Groningen: Bouma, 1982).

16. Borm, ‘Defining Travel,’ pp. 15-18.