Utazás, kultúra, szöveg
Voyage, culture, text

Summary/Abstract: In mediaeval culture the strange and unknown has been placed on the peripheries of the known world. John Mandeville wrote his Voyage to the Holy Land, to India and to China without ever having left Europe. He compiled his travelogies from contemporary ideas and imaginations of the strange and unknown. Therefore his reports have been thought as believable. Columbus actually discovered strange and unknown lands and his perception of the strangenes has been infulenced mostly by Mandeville's descriptions. His reports however have been thought as unbelivable inasmuch as they have been based on his personal experience not fully in accord with the tradition. Menocchio, a heretic Italian craftsmen in 16th century did not even know anything otside his town. He developed however a new concept of his own familiar world based on the legendary descriptions of Mandeville. The anthropology formed a new framework for the perception of strangeness. The concept of culture organizes the bizarre impressions and presupposes an inner coherence of the phenomena of the unknown.

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