Writers and Pilgrims

Writers and Pilgrims: Medieval Pilgrimage Narratives and Their Posterity by Donald R. Howard is a groundbreaking study of how medieval pilgrimage writings shaped literary history. Howard examines hundreds of overlooked pilgrimage accounts, once dismissed as mere travel notes, and argues for their significance as a neglected genre that illuminates the rise of fiction, satire, and narrative forms. By situating pilgrimage literature in its historical, cultural, and religious contexts, he shows how these texts bridged lived religious practices with imaginative storytelling, offering a lens into how medieval people viewed travel, salvation, and human experience.

At the center of Howard’s work are detailed explorations of Mandeville’s Travels and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, two touchstones where fact and fiction intermingle to produce enduring literary achievements. Through these cases and others, Howard reveals how the metaphor of pilgrimage—life as a journey toward spiritual ends—continued to shape narrative structures well beyond the Middle Ages, influencing modern conceptions of travel, storytelling, and cultural identity. Written with scholarly rigor and literary sensitivity, this book restores medieval pilgrimage narratives to their rightful place in the genealogy of European literature.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1980.