Travel Literature

          Reading Mandeville’s travel account, it’s interesting and at times a little disconcerting seeing his descriptions of some of the people of distant lands. Of course, people who don’t get that chance to travel that far away aren’t going to know what life is like in other places, and everyone always expects it to be totally, completely different to their own way of life—even today. The wider world that most people wouldn’t have been able to go see then must have seemed so strange and foreign, so of course his stories would be full of weird descriptions and strange people; it makes others want to go see them, just to see if they’re true and to satisfy their own curiosity. We all want to know what other places and people are like and how they live, and hearing fantastical stories like that from someone who has apparently gone there. You want to believe those stories, but at the same time you don’t because they’re so different from your own life.

            It’s also easy to see how Margery Kempe might have been so overwhelmed with being in all those sacred places. Getting to take a kind of break from her normal life, being a wife and mother, and getting to take that journey through all those special places, especially to her, and actually seeing the places she had heard about as being so monumental for her faith would have been so special. By going to all those places, she could experience more than just the spiritual things and see the cultural differences and would have had the time to take it all in. Being a mystic, those sacred places would have had a draw on her anyways, and getting to go there in person and see them and experience them for herself would, in a way, bring her spirituality or mysticism full circle, and could certainly help in confirming her faith or adding to it, by being at these real places.