Walking in the Middle Ages: Literary forms, cultural styles

The first book-length study of walking in the Middle Ages, this volume examines philosophy, hagiography, miracle narratives, drama, conduct books, literary texts (including Barbour, Langland, Chaucer, Hoccleve, Lydgate, and Kempe), and manuscript illuminations. Essays question periodised claims and highlight what makes medieval walking distinctive. Walking in the Middle Ages reconsiders how walking was understood and represented in medieval literary and visual sources. Rather than treating it as a mere necessity – a form of travel linked to hardship and subject to regulation – the book challenges the claim that walking as a deliberate cultural act or stylistic choice only emerged in modernity.Exploring traditions of walking across philosophy, hagiography, miracle narratives, early English drama, conduct books, vernacular poetry and prose (including works by John Barbour, William Langland, Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Hoccleve, John Lydgate and Margery Kempe), the volume focuses on medieval Britain to contribute new understandings of walking in practice, in performance and on the page.Drawing on critical lenses such as disability studies, posthumanism and dance studies, the chapters show that walking in the Middle Ages was deeply tied to will and profoundly shaped by conditions. Modified and styled by the material environment, landscape and architecture, bodily impairment and physical supports, medieval discourses demonstrate the ‘entanglement’ of walking with the human endeavour to live and act in the world.Countering the idea that walking as a conscious cultural act is a modern invention, this collection reveals that medieval walking was not only associated with travail but also with pleasure, and that it inspired both intellectual reflection and literary and dramatic creativity. The first book-length treatment of medieval walking, the essays in this collection bring into view short-distance, solitary, and group walks from home to church and along highways, pilgrimage walks to local shrines and to the Holy Land, dramatic walking performed on pageants and choreographed in the streets, walking in and at the margins of the city, and liturgical and processional walking. Treating traditions of philosophy, hagiography and miracle narratives, early English drama, art, conduct books, and vernacular poetry and prose (including by Barbour, Langland, Chaucer, Hoccleve, Lydgate, and Kempe), and drawing on a range of critical lenses (including disability studies, posthumanism, and dance studies), this volume opens to scrutiny periodised claims, contributes to understanding the longer history of the modern English ambulatory tradition, and illuminates what makes medieval walking distinctive.

Pagina's: 288, Hardcover, Manchester University Press