Exploring Strange, New Worlds: Travellers and Foreigners in Medieval Iberian Literature PDF
Preview Exploring Strange, New Worlds: Travellers and Foreigners in Medieval Iberian Literature
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS Department of Romance Languages and Literatures Dissertation Examination Committee: Eloísa Palafox, Chair Daniel Bornstein Nina Cox Davis Christine Johnson Joseph Schraibman Julie Singer Exploring Strange, New Worlds: Travellers and Foreigners in Medieval Iberian Literature by Lauren Sappington Taranu A dissertation presented to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2014 St. Louis, Missouri UMI Number: 3611834 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI 3611834 Published by ProQuest LLC (2014). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. 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Box 1346 Ann Arbor, MI 48106 - 1346 © 2014, Lauren Sappington Taranu Table of Contents Acknowledgements iii Abstract of the Dissertation v Introduction 1 Chapter One 22 Altering an Ethnocentric Muslim Paradigm: The Accounts of Andalusi Travellers Abu Hamid al-Gharnati (1080-1169) and Ibn Jubayr (1145-1217) Chapter Two 85 Encountering the Foreign in the Libro de Alexandre and the Libro del Caballero Zifar Chapter Three 144 The Foreign as a Vehicle for Self-Criticism in Medieval Castilian Fictitious Travel Literature: the Libro del conosçimiento (c. 1390) and the Libro del Infante don Pedro de Portugal (c. 1470) Chapter Four 190 New Models of Foreign Relations: The Embajada a Tamorlán (1406) and Andanças e viajes (1454) Conclusion 246 Works Cited 252 Appendix 265 ii Acknowledgments The writing and completion of this Dissertation would not have been possible without the encouragement, insightful criticism, and joy of knowledge and literature expressed by my readers, Nina Cox Davis and Pepe Schraibman; the Dissertation Defense Committee; and most particularly by my Dissertation Director, Eloísa Palafox, whom I profoundly admire. I sincerely thank each one of them for their graciousness, attention to detail, and invaluable suggestions to improve this Dissertation. I am grateful to the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures which provided me with a year-long Dissertation Fellowship in which to exclusively work on this project and travel grants which made research at the Biblioteca Nacional de España and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München possible and productive. Finally, I acknowledge a cherished liberal arts education at Truman State University which fostered my love for travel and learning. iii To my parents, who always encouraged learning, to my beloved sisters, and to Raul, my inestimable travelling companion iv ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Exploring Strange, New Worlds: Travellers and Foreigners in Medieval Iberian Literature by Lauren Sappington Taranu Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Languages and Literatures Washington University in St. Louis, 2014 Professor Eloísa Palafox, Chair This dissertation examines written travel accounts produced by Castilian and Andalusi authors and voyagers from twelfth- to fifteenth-century Iberia. The guiding research questions revolve around how journeyers encountered, reacted to, and reported on foreign peoples, lands, and customs as they left behind their homes and travelled throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia. From their liminal position as persons displaced from their home societies and separated from the ideology and social relations of their native lands, travellers offer a new perspective on a web of connections that permeated a dynamic, responsive, and interconnected medieval world. Chapter One examines the travel accounts of two Andalusi voyagers, Abu Hamid al- Gharnati, a Muslim scholar, and Ibn Jubayr, a pilgrim to Mecca. Looking particularly at religious questions, I read their travel diaries against a backdrop of supposed cultural and religious ethnocentrism and find that while both men hold on to their Muslim faith as a tie to their home worlds, each exhibits cultural awareness and curiosity and participates in a more complicated and diverse world than the one he left behind. Chapter Two is a study of the essential travel components of two popular works of Castilian fiction, the Libro de Alexandre (from before 1250) and the Libro del Caballero Zifar (c. 1300). I focus in particular on the positive representation of the foreign and how these works might reflect back upon the authors’ v home societies. These two ideas—the positive representation of the unfamiliar and the veiled commentary on the authors’ native lands—are main themes in Chapter Three. This chapter treats two works of imaginary travels, the Libro del conosçimiento (c. 1390) and the Libro del Infante don Pedro de Portugal (in circulation by c. 1470). I examine the manner in which the authors utilize the foreign as a way to comment upon problems within their own communities. By setting up foreigners as models of inspiration, the writers were able to advocate for Christian unity and improved moral behavior by admonishing and encouraging their Christian readers without criticizing them outright. Two early-fourteenth-century Castilian travellers are the subject of Chapter Four. Ruy González de Clavijo, an ambassador of Enrique III to the Mongol- Turkic suzerain Timur in Samarkand, and the Cordoban knight Pero Tafur befriend foreign rulers and social inferiors, exchange gifts, and willingly participate in customs alien to their own culture and religion. Praising foreign societies for their wealth, power, and sophistication, Clavijo and Tafur portray themselves as special friends of important foreigners, thus positioning themselves as men specially suited to strengthen the bonds between Castile and alien civilizations in Europe, Africa, and Asia. From the variety of reasons for and manners in which these men journeyed abroad, I conclude that travel is a unique act that has the ability to modify the voyager’s perceptions of the unfamiliar and the foreign. By re-focusing the study of travel literature on the points of contact between the traveller and the foreigner, I attempt in this dissertation to highlight the ways in which medieval Iberian voyagers approached the unfamiliar with more open-mindedness and curiosity than might be expected given the social and historical contexts from which they departed. vi INTRODUCTION As it does today, travel played a meaningful role in the lives of medieval Europeans. Men, women, and children, old and young, noble and commoner made journeys close to and far from home.1 Medieval Europeans travelled for a variety of reasons: local and long-distance pilgrimage, war and crusade, fairs and festivals, trade, commerce, marriage, missionary activity, diplomatic relations, desire for knowledge, delivery of news and messages, knightly feats, royal and noble obligations, diversion, and adventure. While most who left home would have travelled willingly, others were forced to wander as punishment for crimes or perhaps to complete a pilgrimage instead of facing incarceration. Some soldiers must have preferred the comforts of home to war abroad, but others embraced the opportunity to break up the monotony of routine life (lay or monastic) and to see the world beyond. As travel was such a familiar part of many peoples’ lives, it is no surprise that this theme appears in works of fiction as well as biographical or autobiographical works based on true stories throughout the Middle Ages. The situation in medieval Iberia is no different. The idea of journey or travel can be found in a variety of literary genres: popular love poetry, the learned mester de clerecía, chivalric novels, royal chronicles, and travel literature, both fiction and non-fiction, from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries. Journeying outside one’s own town or country provides myriad experiences to relate 1. There are several thoroughly enjoyable studies that inform the modern reader about medieval travel in general, the details of the physical journey, who travelled and for what reasons, and other information that perhaps is not readily apparent in our world of comparatively easy journeys. Norbert Ohler’s The Medieval Traveller (1986) discusses logistics of voyages such as climate and geography, modes of transport, and hospitality. The book also includes discussions of several specific medieval European travellers. Travel in the Middle Ages by Jean Verdon (1998) likewise addresses transportation, lodging, and the various peoples who realized journeys to near or distant lands and their reasons for doing so. Margaret Wade Labarge’s Medieval Travellers (1982) examines general and specific people who travelled in the Middle Ages, and she focuses her study especially on noble or royal travellers, of whom we have the most extant information. These three works are excellent starting points for imagining the world in which medieval voyagers lived and moved. 1 to one’s peers and friends back home. The experiences, observations, praises, and critiques noted in travel accounts reveal much about how the traveller perceived himself and others. Looking at what a writer of travel narrative includes or chooses to silence in a text gives the reader some idea of his world-view and what was important to him. Furthermore, examining the relationship between the traveller and the foreigners he meets abroad allows for a more complete picture of the medieval world and how its various cultures and civilizations interacted with each other. The point of departure for my dissertation is the concept of encounter, that is, the interaction that takes place when the Iberian traveller of the Middle Ages confronts unfamiliar peoples, customs, religions, languages, and systems of governance in alien realms throughout his journeys. Each of my chapters will approach this central idea from various literary and historical perspectives specific to the works studied, but underlying them all will be questions of how the traveller confronts the foreign and the foreigner, how he identifies or perceives the unfamiliar, how he reacts to those new experiences and peoples, and finally, how he explains the foreign in his text for his readers. With this perspective, I hope to fill a void in existing criticism on medieval Iberian travel literature which generally deals with the descriptive and rhetorical elements of travel accounts and the structure of the narrative. In analyzing several distinct travel-books produced by Iberian sojourners between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, I endeavor to trace the evolution of medieval Iberian travel writing and to advocate for a comprehensive and inclusive view of the travel literature genre that embraces a wide rather than narrow range of works dealing with travel. I furthermore hope to open up these under-studied texts to a wider audience and to transmit some idea of the sheer marvel of their daring journeys. The study of medieval Iberian travel literature has remained neglected in comparison 2
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