Consume or be consumed: Anthropophagy in eleventh-to-thirteenth-century European travel literature

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The research project investigates how the consumption of human flesh(known as anthropophagy, or cannibalism if the consumer is also human) in eleventh-to thirteenth-century western-European 'travel literature' affects the experience of the traveller and the rhetorical significance of the journey it describes. By isolating anthropophagical rhetoric in western-European journey narratives, I will shed new light on the expectations and practices of eleventh-to thirteenth-century travel literature and analyse how episodes of anthropophagy reflect contemporary attitudes towards violence, salvation and the significance of the human body.