A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages

A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages

The World Through Medieval Eyes

Summary

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From the medieval souks of Tabriz, to the mysterious island of Caldihe, where sheep were said to grow on trees, Anthony Bale brings history alive in A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages, inviting the reader to travel across a medieval world punctuated with miraculous wonders and long-lost landmarks.

Journeying alongside scholars, spies and saints, from western Europe to the Far East and the Antipodes, this is no ordinary travel guide. From profane pilgrim badges and Venetian laxatives to encounters with bandits and trysts with mysterious medieval witches, this book mixes fact and folklore to offer an entertaining encyclopaedia of wondrous stories and peoples.

Using previously untranslated contemporary accounts from as far and wide as Turkey, Iceland, Armenia, north Africa, and Russia, A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages blurs the distinction between real and imagined places, offering the reader a vivid and unforgettable insight into how medieval people understood their world.

©2023 Anthony Bale (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Reviews

  • A stunning book . . . weird and wonderful and quietly hilarious, but the enormous fun of this book would not be possible without solid graft — Bale’s dogged research and his diligent crafting of perfect prose
    Gerard deGroot, The Times

About the author

Anthony Bale

Anthony Bale is Professor of Medieval Studies at Birkbeck, University of London and a former President of the New Chaucer Society. His previous books include Margery Kempe: A Mixed Life (Reaktion Books). He has edited and translated several medieval texts, including The Book of Marvels & Travels by John Mandeville, The Book of Margery Kempe, and Medieval English Travel: A Critical Anthology, all with Oxford University Press. He was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize (2011) and holds a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (2023-26). He has held fellowships at institutions including Harvard University, The Huntington Library and the University of Melbourne.
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