Walking in the Middle Ages

Literary forms, cultural styles

Katie Walter

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9781807071271
• eBook ISBN:
  9781807071264
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

The first book-length treatment of medieval walking, the essays in this collection bring into view short-distance, solitary, and group walks from home to church and along highways, pilgrimage walks to local shrines and to the Holy Land, dramatic walking performed on pageants and choreographed in the streets, walking in and at the margins of the city, and liturgical and processional walking. Treating traditions of philosophy, hagiography and miracle narratives, early English drama, art, conduct books, and vernacular poetry and prose (including by Barbour, Langland, Chaucer, Hoccleve, Lydgate, and Kempe), and drawing on a range of critical lenses (including disability studies, posthumanism, and dance studies), this volume opens to scrutiny periodised claims, contributes to understanding the longer history of the modern English ambulatory tradition, and illuminates what makes medieval walking distinctive.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction: Medieval walking
• 1 Walking-thinking in conduct literature and Middle English poetry
• 2 Holy impediments, pedestrian care: Walking Cuthbert’s Way, then and now
• 3 Walking objects: Divergent (non-)bodies in late-medieval pilgrimage
• 4 ‘He who walks, may sit’: On walking in medieval philosophy
• 5 (S)pacing faith: Christian pedestrianism and Cycle performance
• 6 Walking in Troy: Choreographic tactics in John Lydgate’s Troy Book
• 7 Faith on foot: How to walk in Piers Plowman
• Afterword: The weight of walking
• Bibliography
• Index