The Travels of Sir John Mandeville: A Manuscript in the British Library by Josef Krasa

The Travels of Sir John Mandeville: A Manuscript in the British Library Reviews

• 
  El

  (I read this book as part of a reading project I have undertaken with some other nerdy friends in which we read
  The Novel: A Biography and some of the other texts referenced by Schmidt.)
  
  I love a good travel memoir, the older the better. Did you know in the fourteenth-century, there were people in the world who had dog heads? It's true, Mandeville told me so!
  
  Of course, no one really knew who Mandeville really was, or if he was even one person (think Banksy), or if he/they even went to any of the places detailed in this book. As a modern reader it's easy to go through and say "Wow, this is not true, that's made up, dude must have been tripping when he came up with that one."
  
  The first part of the book is somewhat a drag to get through, in which Mandeville details the various ways to get to Jerusalem. It's tedious at times, very similar to reading the Bible (at least the parts of the Bible I have read). I was lucky in that my edition at least would put in brackets the names of the real locations Mandeville was likely referencing; this gave me a better understanding of the different routes and, for lack of a better statement, made me feel like I was there.
  
  And then things got a little supernova, in which Mandeville started detailing other "monsters" and people and animals he encountered during his supposed 34 years of travels. There are people with no heads, but they have eyes on each shoulder and a mouth in the middle of the chest, and there are women in other lands who have rubies for eyeballs. I mean real crazy shit that makes reading travel memoirs like this a blast to read.
  
  It's also not a long read, so you can breeze through it rather quickly if you want; the chapters are manageable, and if you're bored by the Jerusalem journey stuff, just let your eyes glaze over until that part ends. It's still a rich text throughout and it's fun to put yourself in the perspective of some regular reader in the fourteenth-century who has never been outside the borders of their land. Mandeville brought the world to the little people, the laymen; it almost doesn't even matter that it's all probably-mostly completely made up. It must have been downright thrilling for readers back then. (And, apparently, for like a century and a half later until people realized they had been completely scammed.)
  
  Also, as Schmidt points out in The Novel, Mandeville treated the world as round, which was not common in the 1300s, right? So then some guy called Christopher Columbus read this book and was inspired, and we all know how that ended. So it doesn't really matter what one thinks of the lies and half-truths within this text - it inspired centuries of readers, explorers, and writers, and that is pretty intense.
  
  
  Note to self: To go further down the rabbit hole, read
  Sir John Mandeville: The Man And His Book.
• 
  Daren

  Before even opening the cover, this is an interesting little book. I say little, because it is a very small edition, with very small text -quite hard to read actually! This edition is published in 1886, and is part of "Cassell's National Library" - there is a list at the rear which puts this book in the company of Lord Byron, Sir Walter Scott, Mungo Park, Herodotus, Richard Hakluyt, and an even wider range of 'travel and adventure' publications.
  The cover isn't leather, but it is woven textile, the spine of which has taken some damage, but is nevertheless an attractive book.
  
  Moving on to the content - Sir John Maundeville (Mandeville in many of the other editions) is a somewhat controversial figure in history. There is much speculation into whether he existed at all, or whether this is a pen name. The contents has been described as unreliable at best, falsified, copied and made up at worst.
  
  I can't make any valuable contribution to the authenticity of the writing, but my take on this edition (there are over a hundred, with a number of editors, translators etc) is that once you start reading, there is no surprise that this book dates from 1886. It is fairly hard to read, with clunky narative and complex sentence structure / syntax, and some obscure references. It isn't just the tiny font I battled with.
  
  It is however, an interesting read. It starts off in Europe, and reads as fairly legitimate. He describes people, places, customs and cultures. As he heads further way from Europe, he starts to introduce the absurd - dog-headed men, an island of men with giant ears, an island of people who hopped around on one giant foot... but then he seems to get giraffes and crocodiles right.
  
  The writing style is very reminiscent of Marco Polo, who frustrated everyone with the continued repeating of certain lines: “I will now tell you” and “I have now told you.” Maundeville's repetitive opener is "And you shall understand..." or "But you must understand that..." and he isn't afraid of a bit of "Now I will return to tell you of..."
  
  There is also a whole lot of religion in here, and it gets pretty preachy. Not my thing at all. But it is explained in the Maundeville apparently provided a copy of his manuscript to the Pope with the hope of receiving some sort of official recognition, so there is an ulterior motive for all the preaching.
  
  Worth noting also that I have read Giles Milton's
  The Riddle and the Knight: In search of Sir John Mandeville, which tries to decipher the fact from the fiction. It would have been interesting to read them side by side - but I have lost the recollection of the detail of Milton's book to draw any conclusion. I do recall Milton was convinced that 'dog face men' were baboons, and giant snails were giant tortoises, there were others.
  
  Hard one to put stars on. The entertaining bits were very entertaining, the hard to read parts were pretty punishing. I am settling for middle ground on 3 stars.
• 
  Felix

  This is one of the strangest books I've ever read. It's a travelogue of a journey that almost certainly never happened - in which the geography is all wrong, the characters are improbable, and all manner of fantastic beasts come out to play. Almost nothing in it is true, but as a document it really gives an insight into how Western Europe in the Middle Ages saw the world beyond their borders. And even in this category, it's not valuable just as the idle speculation of one strange man - au contraire, this book was extremely popular in its day, and taken seriously. It was read by Marco Polo to learn about the world, before setting out himself and finding so much of it to be strange and wrong.
  
  Much of the first half concerns Europe's near-abroad - the Byzantine Empire, and the Islamic Middle East to the south of it. Here, the 'lying Mandeville' (to borrow a term), relies heavily on the Bible, attempting to connect the events of both Testaments with the places in which they happened. Despite a few strange errors (Babylon is full of dragons, and the pyramids are warehouses for the storage of grain), this initial part is the most sensible part of the book. He also apparently visited Nubia, in which the people, if they do not seem black enough when they are born, they use certain medicines to make them black. Mandeville also reports in this section, a strange account of the origin of the Islamic prohibition of alcohol, in which he claims that Muhammad forbid it, because once in drunkenness he killed a good hermit. I've never heard this story attested elsewhere before, nor could I, in my brief search, find any reference to it outside of Mandeville.
  
  He claims, not long after leaving the Middle East, to have visited that perennially popular land of Amazoun [the Amazons], the Land of Women; no man lives there, only women. This is not because, as some say, no man can live there, but because the women will not allow men to rule the kingdom. It always amazes me how popular accounts of the Amazons have been in history. For a people that almost certainly never existed, they come back again and again. But then I suppose Mandeville's claim to have visited them was probably enough to stoke the fire for a few more centuries. Also, perplexingly, This land of the Amazons is an island, surrounded by water, except at two points where there are two ways in.
  
  Ethiopia sounds like a marvellous place: In Ethiopia all the rivers are so turbid and so salt because of the excessive heat of the sun that no-one dare use them. [...] In that land too, there are people of different shapes. There are some who have only one foot, and yet they run so fast on that one that it is a marvel to see them. That foot is so big that it will cover and shade all the body from the sun.
  
  Just in case anything so far has had a smidgin of plausability about it, you will pleased to hear that shortly after visiting Ethiopia, our very own learned and wise tour guide, Sir John Mandeville, reports having visited the fountain of youth: I, John Mandeville, saw this well, and drank of it three times, and so did all my companions. Ever since that time I have felt the better and healthier, and I think I shall do until such time as God in his grace, causes me to pass out of this mortal life. Some men call that well the fons iuuentutis, that is, the Well of Youth; for he who drinks of it seems always young. This all ostensibly takes place in a country (Polumbum) in which women shave their beards, and not men.
  
  The list of absurdities goes on and on and on and on.
  
  Men and women of that isle have heads like dogs, and they are called Cyocephales. These people, despite their shape, are fully reasonable and intelligent.
  
  There are also wild geese with two heads and white wolves with bodies as big as oxen...
  
  In one, there is a race of great stature, like giants, foul and horrible to look at; they have one eye only, in the middle of their foreheads.
  
  This river, the Yangtze, runs through the middle of the land of the Pigmens [pygmies], who are men of small stature, for they are only three spans tall [two feet]. But they are very handsome and well proportioned to their size. They marry when they are a year and a half old, and beget children; they usually live seven or eight years. If they live to nine they are considered marvellously old.
  
  In this land too there are many hippopotami, which live sometimes on dry land and sometimes in the water, they are half man and half horse.
  
  I could go on like this until the cows come home. Once the reader crosses the halfway point of this book, the density of absurdities increases exponentially. There is a new marvel on just about every page. In my determination to mark everything which made me go, 'wait, what?', I became worried that my highlighter would run out of ink. Much of my copy is lit up like a neon sign.
  
  Although ostensibly a travelogue, most of this book reads more like a medieval fever dream. If you're into that sort of thing, or are simply interested in looking closely at how the people of Medieval Western Europe saw the world outside their kingdoms, then this book is of great value, and I recommend it unreservedly.
• 
  Alex

  Michael Schmidt opens
  The Novel: A Biography making a case for this as a protonovel. The first person narrator, he points out, has a real and consistent personality; the various sources, from Herodotus to Prester John, are woven together seamlessly; there is a plot arc and our protagonist returns different than when he left. (Among other things, now he has gout.)
  
  That's all true enough, and I'll accept it as an early novel, but it's not a very good one. Writing at about the same time (the late 1300s), Chaucer is worlds better than this dude; although Canterbury Tale is not a novel, it was certainly more influential to them. And that leaves Mandeville in sortof a "so what?" situation, right?
  
  Look, the story has its moments. It's not a travelogue as we think of them today - I mean, it's not a description of our world. The first half is reasonable enough: it covers the pilgrimage routes from Europe to Jerusalem, routes that were well-established tourist trails. That part was like hiking to Machu Picchu today: it's cool, but it's not like anyone's blazing a trail. The second half covers supposed travels further into Africa and into Asia (which two areas sometimes get confused a little), and it goes totally off the rails as far as verisimilitude - this is where you're running into dog-headed men and cyclops - but at this point you're in a place that might as well be metaphorical anyway, and if you left out things previously described by Herodotus, people would actually be mad. They'd be like "Bullshit, if you really went to Africa how could you have missed the giant gold-digging ants?" There's this map, it's called the T in O Map:
  
  
  
  And the Penguin intro points out that they're "useless as a means of finding one's way, but treat the world...as moral symbols placed on a land space." In other words, if you use this book as an actual atlas, you're going to get in trouble, and if you don't believe me you can ask Columbus. He did, and that's why he thought he was in Asia. Mandeville says the world is 31,500 miles in circumference, which he says he calculated himself but he's actually ripping off Archimedes; the real circumference, which Eratosthenes figured accurately back in the 200s BCE, is around 25,000 miles. Bad job, everyone else.
  
  It's fitfully fun to take this book as a collection of myths. There are wonderful images here: snail shells as big as houses, and an island so hot that "men's ballocks hang down to their knees." There's a "Gravelly Sea, that is all gravel and sand, without any drop of water, and it ebbeth and floweth in great waves as other seas do, and it is never still ne in peace." Cool, right? And there's "a great isle, where the folk be great giants of 30 foot long", which is a
  BFG reference. These fun parts are surrounded by boredom, sadly - long descriptions of how to grow diamonds, for example. Mandeville really likes diamonds.
  
  Mandeville himself, the narrator invented by whoever wrote this book, is chatty and funny. While going through the Vale Perilous, he comments that "I was more devout then, than ever I was before or after." That's a funny line. Also he tells us that "the Jews" made part of the Cross out of cedar "for it is well-smelling, so that the smell of [Christ's] body should not grieve men that went forby," which he probably didn't mean as a joke but I lol'd. But he disappears from the narrative for long stretches: you don't really feel you're getting to know him. When he pops up it's nice largely because you've missed him.
  
  As a look into the way medieval people saw the world and all the weird shit in it, this will do. And it has some fun parts - but lots of boring parts all around them.
  Herodotus is a more likable protagonist, and frankly more dependable as well. Here, I'll rank historical travelogues by accuracy:
  
  Most
  Herodotus (~ Wikipedia)
  Marco Polo
  Travels With Charley
  Around the World in 80 Days
  Mandeville (~ Old Testament)
  Gulliver's Travels
  Least
  
  And it's no more successful as a novel. I didn't have much fun reading it. It seemed mostly like work. I don't think you need to go rushing out to read this one.
  
  Translation note: I read a free version and it was okay, but my friend El read the edition translated by Moseley, which includes notes on which modern places Mandeville is referring to - that sounds awesome. I wish I'd done that.
• 
  Lauren

  This book is two things.
  
  1) A description of the many different routes to Jerusalem, and a detailed account of every tree and rock that was mentioned in the Bible. These parts of the book are pious, lengthy, and, admittedly, a bit boring.
  
  2) A nice summary of fantastical peoples and places, pretty much all gathered from other sources, but thoroughly entertaining nevertheless. Giants? Yup. Dog-headed people? Yup. Rivers that run with rocks instead of water? Yup. It's all here. The amazing stuff isn't all made up - Mandeville also describes giraffes and crocodiles, which must have seemed just as fantastical to his readers. And lots about Prester John, who fascinates me for reasons that I cannot understand. I go nuts for this kind of stuff.
  
  I'm giving this five stars, because the good parts were just so wonderful. Go ahead, skim through the boring parts. They don't last for too long.
  
  Now I think I need to read me some Pliny.
  
  
• 
  Lise Petrauskas

  It took me quite awhile to read this odd book and I had to force myself to finish it. If I hadn't been reading it in tandem with
  The Novel: A Biography I suspect I'd have wandered away from it and not come back. When I'd finished it, I read the introduction, though, which helped me put the book in context of the time it was written. I came to feel that the author was skilled and even subversive, using the pastiche of the travels to reflect on the nature of his own society in a surprisingly nuanced and humane way.
• 
  Janez

  The Travels of sir John Mandeville represent a mediaeval travelogue par excellence! Together with the Travels of Marco Polo and some other contemporary accounts (Vincent de Beauvais' and Odoric di Pordenone's), the Travels constituted the (then) knowledge of the world. Two characteristics stand out: the christianity (with its good and bad sides and Mandeville's subtle criticism of the Catholic Church) and the modern aspect, namely that the Earth is, in fact, round and not flat. The author himself (if he ever was a real person) was a pre-Renaissance man, a traveller surpassing even Marco Polo, a soldier in the employ of the sultan of Egypt, a theologian who knows his Bible well and an erudite in every other aspect. If you would like to know who serves the Great Khan at the court's feasts, Mandeville will give you a detailed description of the ceremony and the protocol. How did the Tartars manage their immensely great empire? In Mandeville's opinion the secret lies in the system of posts introduced by the Tartars. Would you like to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land? No problem, our intrepid traveller will give you tons of advice on what route to take thither, who to speak to, what is there to see, what not to do while being on the way.... And what are the virtues of a diamond? Will the precious gem protect its owner? If you have some doubts about it, don't hesitate to ask John Mandeville who will reassure you.
  I thoroughly enjoyed this book, even thoguh at least a significant part of its content must be either made up or copied from other sources. The book does give an insight into the mediaeval mentality without falling into the prejudices and/or eurocentrism.
  There is, however, one weak point. While reading it, I couldn't lose the feeling that the book wasn't originally written in English. The syntax, the cumulation of relative and adverbial clauses reminded me of French. And indeed, according to the (humorous and exhaustive) Introduction, the Travels were written in Anglo-Norman (a cousin of the French language). Once you get used to it, the book is nothing but pleasure.
  
• 
  Petra

  Sir John travels the known world of the 1300s for 34 years and this is his travelogue. No one today knows who Sir John was or whether he was a real person or a group but, hey, he travelled for 34 years! Who did that way back then and lived to write the tale? Sir John, that's who.
  The first part of the book is the most tedious part. All roads lead to Jerusalem....and there were lots & lots of roads. Sir John lists them all.
  There are gems tucked in between the descriptions of the roads, so not all is lost. For example, the crosses used for crucifixion were made of 4 different woods (one of which was aromatic so that the decaying body was not displeasing to passers by); Jesus' thorny crown is in two halves and each half displayed in different cities.
  The second half of the book tells you the wonders Sir John saw: the ruby eyed ladies, the no-headed humans with eyes & mouth on their chests, the half goat-half men people, the cyclops' and gold....so much gold, not to mention the diamonds...they were scattered on the ground in some places. Amazing! The world was a different place way back then.
  I was surprised at Sir John's mention that the world was round. Wasn't Columbus going to sail over the edge of the flat world in 1492? Sir John was ahead of his time. Did Columbus read this book and take note?
  This book is interesting but, as said, it can be tediously slow in parts. It's worth working your way through it. The chapters are short, you can pace yourself. The English is a bit old but once you're in the rhythm, it reads easily.
  
• 
  Siria

  In the fourteenth century, John Mandeville (a man who did not exist) sat down to write a Book of Marvels and Travels (about places he'd never been to.) Although many other reviewers on this site have referred to this book as either a novel or a travel memoir, it's neither. Instead, it's a glimpse at what people in medieval western Europe thought lay beyond the horizon, from the fantastical to the mundane. I read this in Anthony Bale's OUP edition, which provides an excellent modern translation from the Middle English, preserving much of the syntax while avoiding archaising confusion. Very good for use in the classroom.
• 
  Josh

  And if some men perhaps will not believe me about what I have said, and say it is all a fable … I do not really care. But let the man who will, believe it; and leave him alone who will not. … And so I am not going to stop myself telling you things that I know are true because of those who are ignorant of them or will not believe them.

  
  
  So here’s a book that’s a lot of fun to read in this century. I used to quickly explain it to concerned family members as “Some guy who said he traveled the world but didn’t actually go anywhere and just made a bunch of stuff up and it’s really weird and people took it seriously for like three centuries.” And if the book were just that alone, I’d probably still read it and love it. I went into this knowing I’d love it, but I realized afterwards my idea of it being a book of some weird stuff made up by a conniving liar was a shallow idea of everything this book could be.
  
  
  The Travels of Sir John Mandeville is fulfilling on five levels:
  
  

  1. Its surreal absurdity—and how it’s always mixed in so nonchalantly with perfectly normal and dry travel information.
  
  2. A heavy (heavy) medieval dosage. For those of you who love reading medieval works for the small glimpses you get to the medieval worldview and overall feeling of the era—this book is dedicated to those glimpses.
  
  3. The mystery and intrigue. Who wrote this thing? Did he actually go anywhere? What on earth was his intent with this thing?
  
  4. The cover. The Penguin Classics cover. In all honesty—I would have never noticed this book if I didn’t see (what looked like) anthropomorphic teeth people on an Amazon suggested product. Good job, Penguin designer, you caught my eye. Take my money.
  
  5. The psychology and commentary of John Mandeville himself. This one caught me off-guard; before reading I’d categorized Mandeville as a dirty dirty liar and never expected him to make such an interesting narrator and human being.

  
  The blatantly nonsensical wonders Mandeville describes are entertaining in their own right, but there’s a secondary layer of what-the-hellness added in the way Mandeville chooses to deliver them. Half of this book is dedicated to describe real world geography and politics and history, with the weird stuff mixed in with no overt distinction or separation. Even in the most dry of passages (where there is no water to be found!), there will be the single sentence hiding in there waiting for you to read it and just wonder why. The wonders of the East don’t start in the East—wonders and mystical relics (especially of the Christian variety) pop up in the earliest, most well-known parts of the West. Ireland has trees that birth cranes, France has half of the original Crown of Thorns, and a devoutly Christian satyr mopes around Egyptian deserts. One gets the idea that the whole world, near and far, was uniformly otherworldly. It’s an odd blend of marvel and the commonplace—were the marvels somehow commonplace and expected back then? Were these “marvels” simply accepted as facts of life to the medieval mind? Or did the medieval mind simply find the whole world marvelous? Our modern technological world [cue 1920’s film reel of Model T’s driving around] is full of “marvels,” that someone from the medieval age would find much more ridiculous and implausible than John Mandeville’s, yet we don’t think too much of it. Maybe the overall human mindset has simmered down over the centuries, and has lost that maaagic feeling (nowhere to go)…and this is why I love reading old books!
  
  Much can be lost over six and a half centuries. With each century, the world ticks further away from the world Mandeville wrote for. You may notice I refer to the author as “John Mandeville.” Others clarify that this book was written by “anonymous,” “the author of The Travels of Sir John Mandeville,” or like the Penguin introduction, “Mandeville’s persona.” I don’t see why Mandeville’s identity is such an issue. He may have lied about the things he saw in his book, but that didn’t mean he had to lie about everything. The book had to be written by someone—maybe the author just happened to be an Englishman named John Mandeville. The questions concerning the actual travels I find much more interesting. For example, what was the intent of this book? How far did Mandeville really travel? Was the man overtly lying to his readers, or did he just repeat stories he heard and believed to be true? Many of his monsters and stories have come from writers before him (especially Pliny and Odoric). Yet, similar to Ovid’s
  Metamorphoses, he took old ideas and legends, gave them his special spin and embellishment, and repopularized them, making them his own. (There are a few occasions where Mandeville directly disagrees with his sources, like when he denies the idea that the Great Pyramids are tombs because “tombs ought not, in reason, to be so high.”) Many local tales in the book are introduced by things like “they say that” or “it is said,” indicating that Mandeville is repeating local folklore (and grabs for tourism), and didn’t personally see them for himself. Did Mandeville believe them? It’s possible, if we take the narrator’s word for it. The things Mandeville clearly states he personally experienced are on the more plausible end (such as the luxuries of the Khan, which led into the rant the quote at the top of this review is from. Later editions of this book added in many more “I REALLY DID THIS” comments in an attempt to make the book more credible, I assume, but the editor of the Penguin edition lets you know through footnotes which sentences were added later. The editor also makes an interesting point that Mandeville might have had to include fantastical elements to his travels to make them credible to his audience. Back then, as can be seen from all of Mandeville’s sources, people just knew that out there there be dragons. Denying them these dragons, even if he really did go to India and back, would have made him not taken seriously by anyone. It is fishy how in some areas of the book, Mandeville spits off a list of fantastic animals and creatures in brief bursts, almost as if to get them over with and out of the way…) These small bouts of sincerity directed to the reader makes me want to believe that Mandeville had no ill intent to misinform his audience. John Mandeville—turns out—is the kind of guy you want to root for.
  
  Mandeville speaks with an open-mindedness and awareness about the relativity of culture. His view of the Saracens would sound heretical to many Christians today, essentially saying that while they are clearly wrong in their beliefs and primed for conversion back to the true religion of Christianity, they are overall goodhearted and devoted people who Christians should take some lessons from. Even the absurd isles of pagans and idolaters are filled with good people, only sadly corrupted by the demons who possess their idols and make them speak. Mandeville has no doubt in his 14th century mind that Christianity is of course the correct religion, and could easily take over the whole world if only its followers could be less hypocritical and more devoted like the other religions’ followers are. In one particularly astounding passage, Mandeville blows away the entire medieval slay-the-heathens mindset:
  
  

  And even if these people do not have the articles of our faith, nevertheless I believe that because of their good faith that they have by nature, and their goal intent, God loves them well and is well pleased by their manner of life, as He was with Job, who was a pagan. For we know not whom God loves nor whom he hates.

  
  It’s no surprise this book was heavily censored and modified over the centuries!
  
  Similarly, Mandeville takes the time to justify the actions of even the most barbaric of cultures. One “isle” makes a feast out of the recently deceased in their families. The feast is described in full graphic detail, and yet, although no one really asked for it, Mandeville justifies their actions, saying that they believe being eaten by family members is less painful than rotting in the ground and being eaten by worms. It’s a bad excuse, but the fact Mandeville made the attempt to understand them is shocking for such a xenophobic time period. He finds something to admire in the festival of the Juggernaut, where devoted idolaters will cause as much pain to themselves as possible, including lying underneath the wheels of giant chariots carrying religious items, saying that no Christian would put himself through a tenth of what they do for their idols. In a lighter aside, when being shown an Indian tree which sheep would grow on, Mandeville told the natives that back in his homeland, there are trees where cranes grow from in a similar fashion, and the Indians were greatly impressed with his story. While both trees obviously never existed, Mandeville was self-aware enough to realize that the Easterners and their absurd ways see the West just as absurd and marvellous. In the very morally-binary world of the 1300’s, Mandeville was able to open his eyes and imagine how a foreigner would see his homeland with wonder and amazement, just how he sees theirs. He may have been very off in his ideas about different cultures, but he always gave it a try:
  
  

  But they are black in colour, and they consider that a great beauty, and the blacker they are the fairer they seem to each other. And they say that if they were to paint an angel and a devil, they would paint the angel black and the devil white. And if they do not seem black enough when they are born, they use certain medicines to make them black. That country is marvelously hot, which makes its folk so black.

  
  Many people today pit “science” versus “Christianity,” figuring Christianity, with its fundamental extremists and stubborn evangelists as the enemy to all free thought and discovery. John Mandeville however is a fine example of someone who perfectly merged strong Christian values with an acceptance of shocking new phenomena. Mandeville used Christianity to find order in the world he lived in (or maybe thought he lived in). This is an extremely, extremely Christian book (the sections in the Holy Land making a unique sort of endurance test). Mandeville can tie anything to Jesus. This man took a local Egyptian legend about a fiery phoenix who dies and is born again every five hundred years and managed to spin it towards Jesus. It’s impressive:
  
  

  This same bird is a symbol of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in as much as there is but one God, who rose on the third day from death to life.

  
  While it's not exactly scientific thinking, then, at least, Christianity was a tool for understanding the world, not just shutting out the bits that didn’t agree with it. And just as Mandeville tried to find the motivations behind the most foreign of cultures, he also tried to find the workings to the physical world as well, giving even the most absurd phenomena at least a good guess. One of the only times Mandeville really admitted he had no clue about something was with a self-sacrificing fish:
  
  

  This seems to me one of the greatest marvels I saw in any land, that fish who have the whole sea to swim in at their pleasure should voluntarily come and offer themselves to be killed without any compulsion by any creature. And indeed I am sure it does not happen without some great cause and meaning.

  
  And there you have it. John Mandeville is not a nihilist. Humorously, there is a point where he draws the line:
  
  

  Amongst all the varieties of animals you will not find one that has three heads — one a man’s, one a horse’s, another of an ox or of some other beast — as they make their idols.

  
  Towards the end of his long travels, Mandeville gives a quote that I found oddly motivating:
  
  

  There are many other countries and other marvels which I have not seen, and so I cannot speak of them properly; and also in the countries I have been to there are many marvels which I have not spoken of, for it would be too long to tell of them all. And also I do not want to say any more about marvels that there are there, so that other men who go there can find new things to speak of which I have not mentioned. For many men have great delight and desire in hearing of new things; and so I shall cease telling of the different things I saw in those countries, so that those who desire to visit those countries may find enough new things to speak of for the solace and recreation of those whom is pleases to hear them.

  
  Doesn’t that make you want to go out there? Into that big ol’ world out there? John Mandeville—who the heck is John Mandeville. A shady, elusive figure for sure, but his account of the world he left behind is still our world, in a very literal sense: the same planet, but very different conclusions. The world is flexible. John Mandeville told us about the same globe we live on today. He told us the world was filled with wonder and order—and maybe that was the biggest lie he told. Bah!
• 
  Jack

  A great book and a very silly one.
  
  John Mandeville in all likelihood did not exist, and almost certainly did not travel to anywhere that he described. Even if he lived, and did travel, he would've lied more about what he saw than told any truth, because so much of what he writes about is bizarre and impossible. And yet there is a strange sort of charm about how he writes, too wholesomely to be a mere hoax intended to shame the credible. Most people who would read or hear the stories of Mandeville would be lucky to go further than twenty miles from home. Mandeville broadens their horizons and ignites their imagination; why should what he says necessarily have to be true?
  
  Though it is so often trivial and absurd, this book is fascinating in how it forces the contemporary reader into trying to understand a view of the world of the uneducated in the Middle Ages. How much we supposedly know of the world, having access to news and the internet, being theoretically able to fly where we please. We know that we have the faculties to know more so than we know at all. We cannot possibly believe that there's an island somewhere where green people live in caves eating snakes. I suppose the element of belief where everything is possible has been transposed above, to aliens in distant galaxies. And yet that isn't quite the same either.
  
  If fantasy has the unfortunate problem of using invented beast-races as ugly metaphors for groups of people, one can see its origins here. Mandeville's cavalcade of warped, inhuman cannibals may not have existed, but considering his influence on Columbus, it anticipated a brutality and barbarity in which explorers would become colonialists. Racial stereotyping in fantasy is a broad topic difficult to do justice to in exploring in a short review, but it may likely remain a sensitive subject for any prospective writer. They might do well to read Mandeville, and consider if the fantasy race they are imagining isn't just a contortion of a real ethnic group or nationality they are ignorant of, prejudiced against, unconsciously fear. What are you saying about people by the people you imagine?
• 
  Miike

  I cannot hide my bias about this book; it is my absolute favourite. One of the major differences between ourselves and the Medieval World was the notion of the East and the concept of otherness. The World Sir John Mandeville chronicled was the World we see on antique maps, there is scant regard for topographical accuracy but a wonderful mixture of beasts and monsters. There is controversy as to whether this 'Knight' ever ventured anywhere, some even believe that the name itself is made up. All these issues add to the mystery and sense of adventure in what must be one of the World's first travel books.
  In our 'Age of Reason' we try to explain everything using rational methods and scientific experiment, this book succeeds in doing the opposite. We are introduced to unknown exotica with wonderfully descriptive prose, without our technical vocabulary and jargon the foreign lands and peoples really come to life. Once you have read this book you can enter into the debate as to who this mysterious man was and if he did exist... then where did he actually go? If you reach this stage then you need to get a copy of Giles Milton's 'Riddle and the Knight'.
• 
  Alexis Hall

  This fucking fascinates me.
  
  It is about 40% of a reasonably accurate look at what you imagine things were like, culturally and geographically, in 14th century Europe, 30% tedious verbosity about how precisely to get to Jerusalem, and 30% batshit crazy.
  
  Like the blue people with the big feet.
  
  Yep.
  
  Let me say that again.
  
  The blue people with the big feet.
  
  Which he genuinely honestly 100% definitely encountered.
  
  There's section fairly early on when Mandeville hangs out with the Hashashin (who I also understand are Made Up Due To Mistranslation as stoned assassins are a bugfuck stupid idea - they'd be all "awww, I love you man, shit I'm meant to be killing you, lol, do you have any food?").
  
  Which possibly goes some way to explaining the subsequent sections of the book.
  
  
  
  My other theory about Mandeville is that he maaaaaaade it all up.
• 
  Helmut

  There and back again
  
  There are no marvels left in this modern world. Everything has already been seen, tried, tasted. In former times, when a journey to the Holy Land did not take relaxed five hours in the economy class, but arduous weeks of going on shank's pony, the world was still full of miracles and astonishing things. Sir John Mandeville describes his 34-year journey around the globe in this wild, but amazingly free world of the 14th century.
  
  Of course the language of such an old text is archaic, as well, though still understandable, which is a marvel on its own:
  
  "For in his country is the sea that men clepe the Gravelly Sea, that is all gravel and sand, without any drop of water and it ebbeth and floweth in great waves as other seas do and it is never still ne in peace, in no manner season. And no man may pass that sea by navy, ne by no manner of craft, and therefore may no man know what land is beyond that sea. And albeit that it have no water, yet men find therein and on the banks full good fish of other manner of kind and shape, than men find in any other sea and they be of right good taste and delicious to man's meat."
  
  If you've read the
  The Arabian Nights, some of Mandeville's marvels will sound familiar to you - the different colors of clothing for the religions (blue for the Christians, yellow for the Jews and white for the Muslims), or the lodestone mountain that pulls the nails from ships sailing too close to it. Others, like some stories of the Chan's tributary kingdoms, remind you strongly of Chinese or Indian customs - so strongly, that they cannot be completely fabricated, but must have been inspired by someone having been there.
  
  These accounts are intermixed with pure fantasy about beast-men, ridiculously rich sovereigns, Amazons and islands full of things breaking the laws of physics, nicely illustrated in this edition with 15th century woodcuts.
  
  As the interesting foreword states, Sir John was probably not in all of those places he describes. But then, who of the modern tourist guides' writers, who have it so much easier than a medieval wayfaring man, have travelled the whole world known and unknown and live to tell their tale?
• 
  Maijabeep

  I think my reading of this book was greatly enhanced by the chapter on it in
  The Novel: A Biography. Otherwise, the first half would have been too much of a slog. I don't care about every holy rock in Jerusalem, what can I say. But I ended up really coming to love the tone of the narrator. I had fun imagining what it would be like to read this book if you had never been to any of these places, never seen many or any maps, and willing to suspend disbelief about all of his spectacular claims, lamb-fruit and all.
  
  The edition I read was sorely in need of notes, as well as maps. I don't care if the maps don't make sense, I need to know which fake/real place is next to which!
• 
  Mary Anne

  This novel is not for the faint of heart, for it take perseverance and dedication to understanding the origins of the novel and thereby understand history a bit better.
  Mandeville is very sly, for under his veneer of pious christianity, lies an intellect bristling with indignation at the arrogance of Brits and Europeans, who think that anyone who is different is inferior and not deserving of dignity and respect.
  Mandeville soothes the bigot into thinking he is on the readers' side by describing all the ways to get to the holy land, and only by the way, here are different people from us, and they are deserving of God's love.
  Amazing work, and I am so glad it survived the ravages of Christian purges, perhaps by the brilliance of Mandeville's subterfuge, hiding his true purpose under a pious cover -- creating satire.
• 
  Patrick Stuart

  This was Fun
  
  Bullshit in the same way Monmouths History is bullshit. Not true History, not a full lie. Not fiction, as it has fragments of truth in it, and not claiming to be fiction. With that curious mixture of fact and half-believevd nonsense. Bullshit.
  
  It gets more interesting and entertaining the further away we get from anything the writer actually knows and becomes nearly a fantasy gazetteer towards the end.
  
  I liked the tribe of people who do not eat, and so never grow very large but they survive from the smell of fresh apples, which they always carry with them when they leave their island, but if the apples are taken or rot, they starve to death. Thats late in the 'Travels' as the bullshit meter keeps rising as we go on.
  
  The wierd 'accidental originality' of late medieval texts, where they all pretend to be fact, and are all based on previous books, either cited properly or in this case, just mashed togeher in a mad gumbo, is strangley post modernist.
  
  In Ibn Fadlans The Land of Darkness, Alexander traps the tribes of gog and magog behind a huge iron gate. In Mandelville, the Tribes of Gog and Magig are SUPER-JEWS, the only ethic group or religion he seems to actually hate
  and they will find their way out of the trap after following a tunneling fox.
  
  So; remixes, reinterpretations. All of this deepens my belief that there is no ancient mode, or modernism or post-modernism, or at least, that these are *modes*, ways of thinking which have occoured and reoccoured at different proportions in the population throughout time.
  
  Anyway what else?
  
  The antisemetism is sad but expected. I've come to expect these brief, intense bursts of black hatred in a lot of otherwise good-natured medieval texts.
  
  For the rest of the book Mandevilles voice is one of the most charming things about it, his skipping, rushing, tumbling over itself, almost totally naieve. Delivering everything as a mock-sombre fact, and other than the mad antisemetism, without any real hatered of any of the cultures he describes. There is a clear moral scale between christians and eveyrone else, but other (often made-up) cultures are allowed to have knowedge of god, which makes them moral, and to have their own virtues, vices, talents and works.
  
  He is wide-eyed and everything about his demeanour through the text speaks of a simple, direct and earnest honesty which obviously strikes us somewhat differently than many of his original readers as we know for certain that he is speaking 90 per cent absolute bullshit with slim slivers of fact mixed in.
  
  That takes us from the writers of bullshit to the readers of it, and that penumbral twilinght in which people both believe and are fascinated in something. But also only half-believe, or totally disbelive. Because, the matter of the thing being very far away, almost, but not quite, disconnected from them, (and its that "not quite" that shifts something from fantasy and fiction to bullshit), but you could *maybe* go there, possibly.
  
  Like crop circles and aliens in the 90's, Forts Sea Serpents in the late 19th century, the Dero and Shavers Underground Empires. The borders of the liminal shift with the age, sometimes becoming bright with possibility and creation (the magnificence of Prester John), at other times shadowy and terrible (hidden armies of Super-Jews).
  
  The beach really, or a coastline where the rocks of what can be known are crashed against by the waves of what is only imagined.
  
  
• 
  Eleanor

  1.5
  
  do I even like reading anymore
• 
  Dree

  So, clearly "John Mandeville" did not go everywhere he claims, since he saw wooly chickens and people with no heads and so on and so forth.
  
  Parts of this book were entertaining, especially the chapters on Cathay and those on what is now south/southeast Asia in general. But this is very frustrating to read, and not just because of the old fashioned language. Chapters and chapters devoted to every tiny biblical location detail. Total lack of directional sense, or a map (though clearly it would be hard to put headless people, and people with a huge foot they each use as their shade, and the Amazons on any sort of useful map).
  
  I am sure that for scholars of literature of the 14th century, this may be especially interesting, especially when compared to the bible and other sources/stories. But for a layperson just reading it, it is not so exciting.
• 
  Set

  
  
  And I solemnly swear that all I have spoken is true. haha Madeville is the prime example of the person that lies for self importance so that all will envy him and yet, he calls himself a follower of Christ. Mandeville is a wanderer from medieval times with a wild imagination and a deceiving tongue. Yes, most of the book is boring and consists mostly of directions or should I say routes from one city to another and where to find all the holy relics but then he starts describing all the marvelous things that he saw on his travels and that's where things get interesting.
• 
  Flavs

  El shitposting más largo que haya leído en la vida.
  Doblemente tilteado y entretenido por este libro. No encuentro una calificación que exprese la confusión que traigo, así que se queda sin estrellitas.
• 
  David Withun

  -
• 
  Ted J. Gibbs

  +3 stars for funny men on cover, -2 stars for too much jesu talk :(
• 
  Eilidh Fyfe

  Could not care less.
• 
  Peter

  I found this in the ‘Travel’ section of a local bookshop…but it’s a bit out of date.
  
  Take bananas, for example. Mandeville says that “In the lond of Egipt…men clepen hem apples of Paradys. And thei ben right swete and of gode sauor, and thogh yee kutte hem in neuer so many gobettes or parties ouerthwart or endlonges, eueremore yee schulle fynden in the myddes the figure of the holy cros of oure lord Ihesu. But thei wil roten within viii. dayes, and for that cause men may not carye of the apples to no fer contree.” But I live fer from the lond of Egipt and I have a bowlful of apples of Paradys which I clepe bananas and they are not roten. So not everything Mandeville says is true…though the bit about the holy cros is interesting.
  
  As is the whole book. A compendium of all knowledge about the entire world beyond Europe – what to see and how to get there – in the company of the admirable Sir John who usefully advises which marvels to visit, which to avoid, and which to run away from very quickly.
  
  From our sophisticated vantage point, the writer of the Travels seems to be endlessly gullible – well capable of believing six impossible things before breakfast. But Mandeville’s world was created by God, a place of miracles and marvels attested to by the Bible itself and by the evidence of your own eyes. As a pilgrim you too could see the “Mount of Caluarye where oure lord was don on the cros” and at the foot of the cross “Adames hed founden after Noes Flode”. And “faste by is yit the tree of eldre that Iudas henge himself vpon for dispeyr” and here by the “Dede See dwelleth yit the wif of Loth in lykness of a salt ston” as well as countless other sacred relics, all there for the viewing. The marvels beyond the Holy Land are less biblical, hence less familiar, but equally possible if God ordained them. One might even reach Paradise itself “the highest place of erthe that is in alle the world, so high that it toucheth nygh to the cercle of the mone…enclosed alle aboute with a walle, and men wyte not wherof it is, for the walles ben coured all ouer with mosse, as it semeth”. It is true Mandeville did not get that far. “Of Paradys ne can I not speken propurly, for I was not there. It is fer beyond…and also I was not worthi”. But there it is and it’s a real place. Mandeville tells us that a friend travelled so far around the globe that he ended up back in his own country. How marvellous is that? By comparison, who would believe it?
  
  A real marvel is the author’s willingness to say anything good about non-Catholics. But here he tells us, in the crusading age, that “the Sarazines ben gode and faythfulle, for thei kepen entierly the commandement of the holy book” and can teach ungodly Christians a lesson or two. Even pagans come in for praise – apart from the Tartars who “ben right foule folk and of euyl kynde.” One almost thinks Sir John here speaks from experience…
  
  The Travels is a book to read in Middle English, which makes even a list of animals – babewynes, cokadrilles, porcz despyne, olifantes, and grete myze – seem that much more fabulous. A modern translation would, I think, lose much of the book’s endless sense of wonder.
  
  At the end, I have to admit that this old atheist – twinged by a touch of the artetykes – almost muttered a prayer for someone who probably never existed and who probably never travelled anywhere.
  
  “I Iohn Maundevylle knyght aboueseyd, alle though I be vnworthi…haue passed many londes and manye yles and contrees and cerched manye fulle strange places…am now comen hom mawgree myself to reste for gowtes artetykes that me distreynen…haue fulfilled theise thinges and putte hem wryten in this boke…Wherfore I preye to alle the rederes and hereres of this boke, yif it plese hem, that thei wolde preyen to God for me and I schalle preye for hem.”
  
  Amen. Amen. Amen.
• 
  Heidi

  Ritariksi itseään kutsuvan tarinointia matkoistaan/matkastaan kohti Pyhää maata ja sen yli kohti itää (jossa Paratiisi). Väittää olevansa Englannista, oli luultavasti pappi Ranskasta. Julkaistu alunperin 1300-luvun loppupuolella. Kuvaa kohtaamiaan kansoja, heidän tapoja ja hallitsijoita (voi sitä kullan, jalokivien, helmien ja sotajoukkojen määrää!), lisäksi kuvailee elinolosuhteita, eläimiä ja kasveja. Sitä villimmäksi kuvailuissaan menee mitä kauemmaksi siirrytään Euroopasta. Kuten: on ihmisiä joilla kasvot vatsassa pään sijasta, on puu josta kasvaa lampaan kaltaisia ”hedelmiä”, on kentaureja jne. Lukukokemuksena hauska ja samalla kiinnostava ajankuva. Yllättävän uskontodialoginen (paitsi ajalleen tyypillisesti kuitenkin antisemitistinen), vaikka Jerusalem on maailman keskus ja kristinuskon läpi tarkastelee maailmaa. Sir John Mandevillen maailma on pyöreä.
• 
  Jordan

  Disclaimer: This book was a requirement for one of my history classes this semester. I usually do not like the books I am forced to read and this is no exception.
  
  To simply put it, I did not like this book in the least bit. If I read without it being required, I'm sure I still would not have enjoyed it. The author, John Mandeville, is the poster boy for stuck-up, arrogant English "knights" who travel the world and diss everyone who is different than they are. He was so pretentious and annoying. If I have to read the phrase "and you must know" one more time, I think I'll go mad.
  
  Do yourself a huge favor and don't read this book. It was truly awful.
• 
  aliya

  at first i was like omg this actually seems quite interesting. and then i learned that there’s sm speculation on whether the writer even existed and i was like … okay. ITS ALL LITERALLY UNRELIABLE AND COPIED AND MADE UP. also quite a bit of religion which isn’t my cup of tea when it comes to literature. it starts off quite “normal” in europe but the second he gets away from that…… my god…. anyways read this for comp lit class, not taking it too seriously
• 
  Alex Smith

  oh my god quit your fucking yapping