Poetry and Pilgrimage

A pilgrimage, as understood in the Middle Ages, requires the pilgrim to endure physical trials and spiritual trials. The imagination bridges these two trials. The sores on one's feet are imagined to represent the soul's connection to an imperfect world; physical thirst is understood to represent spiritual thirst; physical hunger, spiritual hunger, etc. The imagination, although at a distance from the real, serves as the bridge between our lives and our destinies. The pilgrim who has completed his or her pilgrimage understands the spiritual aspect only through a clear understanding of what has physically and literally transpired and through the imaginative struggle to create analogies of the physical concerning the spiritual.

In this class, we will discuss the nature of poetry, the nature of pilgrimage, and the importance of our identities in the world, both our personal and our communal identities. We will study the gap between the physical and the spiritual while keeping in mind that only through clearly seeing them both can the gap between them be understood.