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Activities for Key Stage 3
Investigate local pilgrimage routes.
Were there any shrines near you? What can you find out about them? Even if you live far from old places of pilgrimage, find out about which saints local churches are dedicated to. In the past saints had different ‘specialisms’ - diseases which they were particularly good for or occupations/groups of people to whom they were particularly favourable. What kind of pilgrimages could have developed in your area?
Use a passage from Bunyan’s Pilgrims Progress to find out about allegory.
How are abstract vices and virtues given personality and made vivid? Give students a different vice or virtue for them to allegorise. Link the various vices and virtues to create a single narrative - or as the basis for a drama.
Investigate modern secular ‘pilgrimages’.
The graves of Elvis, Jim Morrison, or Karl Marx. Or to health clubs and spas. Or football grounds. What shared characteristics do such journeys have with religious pilgrimages? How do they differ?
Chaucer created an array of pilgrims to the shrine of St Thomas a Becket which gave a lively picture of fourteenth century society. What ‘pilgrims’ could be gathered for a flight to, say, Elvis’s grave in Memphis? Students could choose a representative individual and write a monologue which reveals their motives and self-deceptions. Other ideas for exploring the concept of pilgrimage through the work of Chaucer can be found on the Guardian Education website.
In the Middle Ages pilgrims walked, rode and sailed to pilgrimage sites.
Think of a modern European pilgrimage site - Taize, Lourdes, or somewhere similar. How do people make their way there today? Investigate the different ways of travelling there and record the time and the cost of each method. Think of the experience of travelling by air or walking - what are the advantages and disadvantages of each method? How might the method of travel affect a pilgrimage?
Returning from even a two week holiday can make one’s hometown seem strange.
Sights and sounds that were once unnoticed because they were familiar take on a fresh and sometimes eerie quality. Have students experienced this? What might be the effect of travelling for, say, a year? How long before ‘home’ ceases to be home and becomes an alien place.
Listen to Bob Dylan’s ‘Rank Strangers to Me’ from his album Down in the Groove in which the persona of a wanderer voices a sense that nowhere can be called home. Write an imaginative piece, in verse or prose, which explores this experience.