They have travelled farther and more extensively in spirit and personally": the position of the late Middle Dutch travel narrative Tvoyage van Mher Joos van Ghistele (ca. 1490) in medieval etnography.

This research focuses on Tvoyage van Mher Joos van Ghistele (ca. 1490), the elaborate late Middle Dutch travel narrative on the equally extensive journey of Flemish nobleman Joos Van Ghistele (¿1516) to the Near East (1481-1485), handed down to us in manuscripts as well as in print, and recently published (Gaspar 1998). The dissolution of the text in the print and reprints (1557, 1563, 1572) shows evidence of its encyclopedic reception. Through comparative analysis with a lateral corpus of late medieval and early modern printed western travel narratives and by examining Tvoyage's narrative techniques in this lateral corpus, I will verify which characteristics have enabled the text to be used for its encyclopedic value far into the sixteenth century. Conclusively Tvoyage will be situated in the development of the ethnographic (e.i. empirical-describing) genre.

Keywords:MEDIEVISTICS

Disciplines:Language studies, Literary studies