Bibliogr. p. 292-302. Glossaire

The ambivalence of movement Movement is at the heart of the human condition, be it forced movement in Biblical texts, with Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden and the exile of the Hebrew people, or the ubiquitous motif of movement in Ancient myths (the Iliad, the Odysseus, the Aeneid). The movement that prevents one from settling down is first seen negatively: Adam and Eve became exiles as a consequence of their sin, and the uprooted man is an outsider, one who lives outside of the bounds of the community. He is the nomad, the stranger, the invader. In a feudal Occident where one's identity was defined by the land one belonged to (in the eyes of justice, the serf and the land are one), movement meant running away, loss, danger, or invasion (it is the case with Romans, Barbarians, Vikings, Huns, free companies). In The Wanderer, a tenthcentury poem, a solitary traveller, driven to exile after the death of his comrades on the battlefield, laments his loss, reminiscing his past joys at court. This solitary man calls himself “anhaga” in Old English, that is to say one who does not have a house or one who is not in a closed space. But, paradoxically, the concept of travelling, whether real or metaphorical, can also be a way out of a possibly stifling entrapment. Movement also opens up many possibilities and potentialities: “Travel broadens the mind, and knowledge of distant places and people often confers status, but travellers sometimes return as different people or do not come back at all.” [HULME and YOUNGS, p. 2]. The ambivalence of movement is also that of travelling. éditeur