This thesis explores the nature of the late medieval European worldview in the context of the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century European journeys to Asia. It aims to determine the precise influence of these journeys on the wider European Weltbild. In lending equal weight to the accounts of the eastward travellers and the sources authored by their counterparts in Europe, who did not travel to Asia, the present study draws together two related strands in medieval historiography: the study of medieval European cosmology and worldview, and the study of medieval travel and travel literature. This thesis treats the journeys as medieval Europe’s interaction with Asia, outlining how travellers formed their perceptions of ‘the East’ through their encounters with Asian people and places. It also explores the transmission of information and ideas from travellers to their European contemporaries, suggesting that the peculiar textual culture of the Middle Ages complicated this process greatly and so minimised the transfer of ‘intact’ perceptions as the travellers originally formed them. The study contends instead that the eastward journeys shaped the late medieval European world picture in a different way, without overturning the concepts that underpinned it. Rather, this thesis argues, thirteenth- and fourteenth-century eastward voyages subtly altered how Europeans were inclined to understand these underpinning concepts. It suggests that the journeys intensified and made the concepts more immediate in Europeans’ minds and that they ‘normalised’ travel itself to the point where it became an essential part of the way Europeans could most readily make sense of the vast and kaleidoscopic world around them.

Global mobility, wireless technology and networked society are transforming the airport territory. These changes (hard factors) have been analysed in airport planning and transportation studies (Koll-Schretzenmayr 2003; Banister 2003; Schaafsma 2003; Knippenberger &Wall 2010; Salewski & Michaelli 2011; Convenz & Thierstein ed. 2014 et al) and architecture and design (Edwards 1998; Blow 2005; Cuadra 2002; Uffelen 2012; Gensler 2013 et al). But design strategies focusing on the passenger experience (soft factors) have not yet been thoroughly assimilated by architecture and design. On the theoretical level this dissertation spans the analysis of current methodologies in social studies (e.g. Castells 1996; Gottdiener 2000; Cresswell 2006; Urry, 2007; Elliott & Urry 2010; Adey 2010 et al) and their relation to architectural and urban studies concepts for the airport. The latter includes the “Airport as City” (Güller & Güller 2000), “Aviopolis – A Book about Airports” (Fuller & Harley 2005) and “Aerotropolis” (Kassarda 2010). This dissertation also explores IT and aviation industry interests at the interface between technology and air travellers. In this light aviation industry research and solutions (Amadeus 2011, SITA 2013) are important to consider, as well the philosophy behind who travels and for what purpose (Sloterdijk 1998; Koolhaas 1998; Gottdiener 2000; Urry 2007; Birtchnell & Caletrio 2014 et al). Here, the author’s previous field research at Frankfurt International Airport is relevant. We live more mobile lifestyles, we work in hybrid spaces (Suoza 2006; Duffy 2010 et al), and we consequently need to share information and collaborate differently. Using constant travellers as a case study, the impact of physical and informational mobility on perceptions of and behavioural patterns in the airport can lead to a deeper understanding of mobile work and the air travel experience. New design strategies can be developed from research about constant travellers, and the results may improve their work and air travel experience. The author’s combination of design approaches from architecture and social science (sociology and psychology) methodologies can better address the real needs of constant travellers in hybrid workspaces. It is hoped that this dissertation will inspire airport architects and designers, interaction designers and the aviation industry to pay more attention to users’ needs in their design processes.

This thesis charts the increasing volume and changing nature of tourism in Europe. It was allowed by the liberalization of air travel market (the emergence of Low-Cost Carriers), and by the emergence of sharing economy (Airbnb). Followed by these changes a new segment of tourists, who were described as independent travelers, emerged. The thesis focuses on the interaction of those three factors and their effect on urban space - thus on its socio- geographic, socio-economic and socio-cultural fabric. Because of Low-Cost Carriers, tourists and travelers are concentrated in several European cities - those which were able to accommodate its environment for these airlines. In the cities, tourism spread from the concentric zones of the city center to the zones of the inner city, where a new tourist industry was adjusted for independent travelers. This touristification deepens the process of gentrification and spatial inequalities. Because of Airbnb, the limited hotel supply in the city center was surpassed, and the accommodation sector was integrated into residential fabric of the inner city. Those touristified spaces of the city become socio-culturally heterogenic. However, with increasing costs of living in the inner city, this space is more and more socio- economically homogenous. Consequently,...

This study examines the value of travellers’ written records of their trips with specific reference to the journals of five French travellers who visited Scotland between 1780 and 1830. The thesis argues that they contain material which demonstrates the merit of journals as historical documents. The themes chosen for scrutiny, life in the rural areas, agriculture, industry, transport and towns, are examined and assessed across the journals and against the social, economic and literary scene in France and Scotland. Through the evidence presented in the journals, the thesis explores aspects of the tourist experience of the Enlightenment and post -Enlightenment periods. The viewpoint of knowledgeable French Anglophiles and their receptiveness to Scottish influences, grants a perspective of the position of France in the economic, social and power structure of Europe and the New World vis-à-vis Scotland. The thesis adopts a narrow, focussed analysis of the journals which is compared and contrasted to a broad brush approach adopted in other studies.

Cette thèse de doctorat est consacrée à l’étude de l’un des tabous majeurs des sociétés humaines :la consommation par un individu de la chair ou de toute autre substance issue de ses semblables, autrement dit l’anthropophagie (ou cannibalisme). Selon une approche inédite, la problématique a été abordée dans toute la diversité de ses manifestations, au travers d’une documentation très variée, tant textuelle qu’iconographique, dans le cadre de l’Antiquité grecque et latine et au sein du Moyen Age occidental (latin surtout). L’objectif de la recherche était de mettre en évidence les pratiques, les discours et l’imaginaire d’un comportement alimentaire radicalement étranger aux normes culturelles des périodes et des lieux envisagés.<p>Le plan de la thèse est conçu comme un parcours débutant et s’achevant aux confins du monde (le cannibalisme de « l’Autre »), tandis que le cœur du travail est consacré au cannibalisme de « l’intérieur », celui des affamés et des marginaux surtout. Tout naturellement, l’attention se focalise d’abord sur Homère et la confrontation d’Ulysse avec le Cyclope, qui installe dans la tradition l’imaginaire du pasteur des confins du monde, grand amateur de chair humaine. Hérodote, quant à lui, construit l’image d’un monde connu dont les frontières sont occupées par des peuples qui apprécient bien souvent la chair humaine. Là encore, le pasteur nomade est synonyme de sauvagerie. Une telle tradition perdure chez les auteurs latins antiques et médiévaux, qui reprennent à leur compte les anciens anthropophages en les déplaçant parfois, en les multipliant éventuellement. Mappae mundi médiévales, récits de voyage et descriptions du monde maintiennent dans les siècles qui suivent les mangeurs de chair humaine aux marges du monde, là où Colomb s’attendra plus tard à les trouver.<p>Le rôle du cannibalisme en tant que marqueur d’altérité trouve un écho très fort dans la marginalisation de certains groupes ou individus au sein même des sociétés antiques ou médiévales. A notamment été développé le cas des accusations de cet ordre portées contre les premiers Chrétiens. Le danger représenté par le franchissement de la norme fait naître par inversion des pratiques ou des croyances qui visent à exploiter les potentialités curatives ou « magiques » de la consommation de substances humaines :en témoignent le controversé cannibalisme médical ainsi que le matériel offert par les pénitentiels médiévaux. Un bref chapitre s’attache à un autre genre de comportements en marge :des scènes de cannibalisme censées avoir constitué le point culminant d’épisodes de violence collective.<p>Une grande attention a été accordée au cannibalisme de survie, le recours à la chair humaine comme nourriture de substitution en période de famine. Le passage de l’incompréhension antique face à un comportement indigne de l’homme à l’assimilation par la pensée chrétienne de ce type de cannibalisme à un fléau divin a été largement traité. La longue tradition médiévale des récits, issus de Flavius Josèphe, relatant la consommation d’un enfant par sa mère au cours du siège de Jérusalem a permis de démontrer la force de la présence du thème du cannibalisme dans l’imaginaire médiéval en tant que sanction divine. Une ample documentation a pu être réévaluée à la lumière de ce constat, ce qui a notamment permis de montrer de quelle façon l’évocation du cannibalisme pouvait être instrumentalisée afin de signifier la présence d’une sanction divine.<p> / Doctorat en Histoire, art et archéologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished