Background
Sir John Mandeville was born at Saint Albans, United Kingdom in 1300.
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The Book of Marvels and Travels (Oxford World's Classics)
(In his Book of Marvels and Travels, Sir John Mandeville d...)
In his Book of Marvels and Travels, Sir John Mandeville describes a journey from Europe to Jerusalem and on into Asia, and the many wonderful and monstrous peoples and practices in the East. Written in the fourteenth century, the Book is a captivating blend of fact and fantasy, an extraordinary travel narrative that offers some revealing and unexpected attitudes towards other races and religions. It was immensely popular, and numbered among its readers Chaucer, Columbus, and Thomas More. Here Mandeville tells us about the Sultan in Cairo, the Great Khan in China, and the mythical Christian prince Prester John. There are giants and pygmies, cannibals and Amazons, headless humans and people with a single foot so huge it can shield them from the sun. Forceful and opinionated, the narrator is by turns learned, playful, and moralizing, with an endless curiosity about different cultures. Anthony Bale provides a lively new translation along with an introduction that considers questions of authorship and origins, the early travel narrative, Crusading and religious difference, fantasy and the European Age of Discovery, and Mandeville's pervasive popularity and influence. The book includes helpful notes on historical context that provide insights into medieval culture and attitudes. There are also three maps, an index of places and a general index, and a note on medieval measurements. About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
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John Mandeville
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He fled from England on September 30, 1322, after killing a fellow nobleman. He visited the Holy Land, served Melik Nasir, sultan of Egypt, for seven years, witnessing a campaign against the Bedouins, and returned to Europe in 1356.
Under the names of Johannes ad Barbam (John with the Beard) and Jean de Bourgogne he settled at Liège to rest from his wanderings--"against my will, God knoweth"--to practice as a physician, and to write and circulate his Travels in Norman French.
He died, after suffering from arthritic gout. His executor, the Liège notary Jean d'Outremeuse, issued several further versions of the Travels with interpolations from his own epic, since lost, on Ogier the Dane. The above account is contradicted by Josephine W. Bennett, who maintains that all evidence for his connection with Liège and Jean de Bourgogne was fabricated by Jean d'Outremeuse.
Most of his book is drawn from earlier written sources, including both genuine travelers and such fabulous sources as the Alexander romances, early bestiaries, and the spurious letter of Prester John. So little remains unborrowed that even Mandeville's Near Eastern travels were long considered mythical; but the Swiss scholar R. Fazy has shown good grounds for supposing that he visited Constantinople, Cos, Cyprus, Jaffa, and Jerusalem, and served the sultan in the period stated.
His peregrination of the Far East, where he claims to have tasted the Fountain of Youth and the Vegetable Lamb, to have passed through the Vale Perilous and served Prester John, is no doubt wholly fictitious; but Mandeville should be regarded, in Mrs. Bennett's words, as "neither a plagiarist nor a forger, but the creator of a romance of travel, a field in which he holds his place with the best. "
Mandeville's work achieved rapid and lasting popularity in nearly all European languages. His argument that the earth is round may have helped to inspire Columbus; his influence is visible in More's Utopia, Ariosto, Spenser, Bunyan, Swift, Coleridge, James Joyce, and others; and the various anonymous English translations of his book are among the major works in Middle English prose.
There is a modernized text of the Travels, edited in two volumes by Malcolm Letts (1953), who has also written Sir John Mandeville: The Man and His Book (1949). For a bibliography of versions of the Travels in eight languages, see Josephine W. Bennett, The Rediscovery of Sir John Mandeville (1954).
Works
book
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The Book of Marvels and Travels (Oxford World's Classics)
(In his Book of Marvels and Travels, Sir John Mandeville d...)
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The Book of Marvels and Travels (Oxford World's Classics)
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Born
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Died
January 17, 1372 (aged 72) -
Nationality
British