2023: Special Issue 16: Detours, side trips, byways
Medieval narrative texts are characterised by the paths taken by their characters. These paths are closely linked to the characters' experiences and perceptions and determine the narrative space and the structure of the text. Through the mobility of the characters, spatial and subject boundaries are crossed, knowledge and experience are expanded and ideas of self and other, of proximity and distance, of centre and periphery are negotiated. It is rarely the straight, purposeful paths, but above all the detours, side paths and byways that lend themselves particularly to narrative development and symbolic charging. The contributions in this anthology illustrate this narrative multivalence of narrated paths and also locate the texts analysed in the transcultural narrative of pre-modern literature.
