starting point
In some ways I think my topic is similar to Greenblatt's Hamlet in Purgatory: he discusses the aftermath of the purgatory concept during the Renaissance, so fiercely attacked by Protestant reformers, and I am exploring the attitudes toward pilgrimage (also deemed evil) in the same period. Greenblatt usually likes to add some 'autobiographical musings' in his works, on how parental influences or chance encounters led him to the research of this subject. I like reading these stories, and he describes them so well; however, I think the self shouldn't be present in academic writings, 'I' is there but not seen. (Unlike children who should be seen but not heard.) Yet I still think about what got me started with pilgrims and pilgrimages in the first place... I shall feign an interesting personal story eventually.