Pilgrimage to the cibdat de gygantes. Configuration of the Biblical Geographical Imaginary in La fazienda de Ultramar

Abstract

Given that the medieval image of the world is strongly influenced by ideas inherited from the Bible, which often conflict with the empirical exploration of the terrestrial globe, the study of travel literature in general, and of pilgrim’s guides to the Holy Land in particular, allows us to comprehend the way in which medieval authors embraced the biblical imaginary in order to shape the world, whose exotic limits became familiar as they came to be the setting for the stories most valued by contemporary readers. Among the repertory of Hispanic literature, La fazienda de Ultramar, whose composition is supposed to have occurred sometime during the first decades of the thirteenth century, is a text of chief importance attributable to its condition as one of the earliest vernacular versions of the Bible. Not only is it a foundational text of the tradition that would change the way in which medieval men accessed the Holy Scriptures; it also grants us a means to knowing the manner in which the Bible influenced how medieval readers imagined the geography of the Holy Land, because of its itinerarium nature. Therefore, the purpose of this study will be to analyse the way in which the structure of this itinerarium affects the treatment of the holy text, and the fashion in which the narrative logic of the biblical episodes is subjected to geographical depiction. Thus, we will try to clarify a number of matters that have cast a shadow over the study of this work.