| Description |
This dissertation explores the construction of cultural knowledge of the world in both medieval and early modern Western and Arabic travel accounts, which have been until this present study largely examined separately. It argues that each culture conceptualizes the world according to a foundational metaphor that organizes its perception and determines its travel experiences. Western travelers adopt the metaphor of water to structure the world, whereas Arab travelers adopt the metaphor of land to structure the world. Both metaphors organize all aspects of life for the traveler, from travel paradigms to maps, marvels, rituals and values. The main theoretical approach adopted to undertake the comparison is the metaphor theory advanced by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their study Metaphors We Live By, which argues for the pervasiveness of conceptual metaphors in our daily life. Hence, this dissertation fills in a scholarly gap in the study of medieval and early modern Western and Arab travel accounts by examining them comparatively. Importantly, it places Western and Arab travel accounts and maps into conversation for the first time, thus revealing the dynamics of the cultural construction and borrowing of knowledge. The comparison demonstrates moments when both sets of travelers come into proximity in their reconfiguration of the world, particularly in early modern times. The dissertation also investigates questions of mental mapping by comparing travel texts to maps in the two cultures, to which end I use Bakhtin's notion of dialogism. Consequently, the study highlights influential ways of world making that constantly converge and diverge across time and space, as shown in the nexus between travel accounts, maps, and marvels. Importantly, it allows for the comparative study of knowledge construction in other areas pertaining to Western and Arab cultures to reveal their rich interaction. John Mandeville's The Travels (c.1357) and Sir Walter Ralegh's The Discoverie of the Large, Rich and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana (1596) comprise the Western cluster. Risalat Ibn Fadlan (Ibn Fadlan's Epistle) (tenth-century) and Leo Africanus' Description of Africa (1526) comprise the Arab cluster. |
