John Mandeville, Mandeville's Travels

Sarah Salih (King's College London)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.02: English Writing and Culture: High and Late Medieval, 1066-1485.
Vol. editors: Kate Ash-Irisarri (University of Edinburgh), Rory Critten (Université de Lausanne), David Fuller (University of Durham), Natalie Hanna (University of Liverpool), Hugh Magennis (Queen's University Belfast), Jamie McKinstry (University of Durham), Sarah Peverley (University of Liverpool), Sebastian Sobecki (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen)

Dates

First circulation or publication c. 1357

Places

France (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Non-Fiction
- Guidebooks / Travel writing
- Journal/ Diary

Resources

Mandeville's Travels, also known as The Book of Sir John Mandeville, was one of the most popular vernacular texts of the Middle Ages. It purports to be the memoir of Sir John Mandeville, a knight of St Albans, writing in his old age of his adventurous life in Europe and the East. In the course of his travels Sir John made pilgrimages to holy sites including Rome and Jerusalem, saw military service with the Sultan of Egypt and reported on the peoples, customs and histories of the lands through which he passed. The current critical consensus, however, is that there was no such person and that the author, whoever he was, travelled only in his imagination. There is no reliable corroborating evidence of the existence of a Sir …

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1939 words

Citation: Salih, Sarah. "Mandeville's Travels". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 26 March 2004 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=10581, accessed 26 November 2024.]

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