Journey to Compostela: A Novel of Medieval Pilgrimage and Peril
Editorial Reviews
Book Description
On a pilgrimage through medieval Spain, a knight and a peasant play a cat-and-mouse game that grows deadlier with each passing day. Professor Bernard Reilly has once again used his deep historical knowledge to write a gripping novel about medieval Spain. In addition to a tense narrative about a pilgrimage through dangerous territory, this is also a novel of ideas, and will be read by many for the moral and psychological issues it raises. Professor Reilly knows medieval Spain very well and presents a realistic but colorful picture of Compostela and its pilgrims.
Stylistically, Professor Reilly's vigorous prose only gets better with each new novel. This book will interest several different audiences. On the literary level, Journey can be read as a sort of anti-Canterbury Tales, in which the pilgrims are miserable products of the harsh realities of medieval life, in stark contrast to the more idealized portrait found in some other works. On the historical level, the book serves as a capsule portrait of early feudal relationships, under which most of the population was subservient to brutal and capricious warlords. Psychologically, the book addresses universal themes of dominance and submission, and the ambiguous character of interpersonal relationships. Bernard Reilly is Professor Emeritus of History at Villanova University and the author of several works of distinction on medieval Spain.
Journey to Compostela: A Novel of Medieval Pilgrimage and Peril,Bernard Reilly,Combined Publishing,1580970427,Biography/Autobiography,Christian pilgrims and pilgrim,Christian pilgrims and pilgrimages,Fiction,Fiction - Historical,Historical - General,History,Knights and knighthood,Peasantry,Santiago de Compostela (Spain),Spain
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