Event Title

Mice, Marmots, and Mare’s Milk: European Travelers and the Cuisine of the Medieval Far East

Location

Session III, Virtual Room 2: Time Traveling

Start Date

30-9-2020 4:00 PM

End Date

30-9-2020 4:55 PM

Participation Type

Poster

Description

As medieval scholarship has begun more deliberately to take a global turn beyond the boundaries of Europe and North Africa—even though the term ‘medieval’ itself is grounded in western chronology and is therefore a problematic category—the writings of travelers, missionaries and adventurers into far-reaching and unknown realms have become fertile resources for widening the scope and perspective of what constitutes elements of culture during that chronological period. Of course, the fact that most of the travel writings are western in origin and therefore offer an extraneous perspective on non-western worlds must be taken into account; however, some of the reports and memoirs are surprisingly straightforward, even clinical, in their narrations of encounters with the foreign, the unexpected, and the different, while yet acknowledging the ‘otherness’ of the unknown.

This paper will explore the commentaries of medieval travelers Marco Polo (1254-1324) and Friar William of Rubruck (ca. 1220-ca. 1293) about food cultures and characteristic cuisines in the medieval Far East, especially with reference to rituals of welcome and hospitality . Both men journeyed to the “Far East” yet for distinct and somewhat dissimilar purposes, but both included in their accounts frequent allusions to local cuisines and dietary habits as cultural effects and as indicators of both similarity as well as difference.

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Sep 30th, 4:00 PM Sep 30th, 4:55 PM

Mice, Marmots, and Mare’s Milk: European Travelers and the Cuisine of the Medieval Far East

Session III, Virtual Room 2: Time Traveling

As medieval scholarship has begun more deliberately to take a global turn beyond the boundaries of Europe and North Africa—even though the term ‘medieval’ itself is grounded in western chronology and is therefore a problematic category—the writings of travelers, missionaries and adventurers into far-reaching and unknown realms have become fertile resources for widening the scope and perspective of what constitutes elements of culture during that chronological period. Of course, the fact that most of the travel writings are western in origin and therefore offer an extraneous perspective on non-western worlds must be taken into account; however, some of the reports and memoirs are surprisingly straightforward, even clinical, in their narrations of encounters with the foreign, the unexpected, and the different, while yet acknowledging the ‘otherness’ of the unknown.

This paper will explore the commentaries of medieval travelers Marco Polo (1254-1324) and Friar William of Rubruck (ca. 1220-ca. 1293) about food cultures and characteristic cuisines in the medieval Far East, especially with reference to rituals of welcome and hospitality . Both men journeyed to the “Far East” yet for distinct and somewhat dissimilar purposes, but both included in their accounts frequent allusions to local cuisines and dietary habits as cultural effects and as indicators of both similarity as well as difference.