John Mandeville
Sir John Mandeville is a pseudonymous figure associated with a travel narrative purportedly written in Latin around 1356, later translated into English and French. The character claims to be an English knight from St. Albans, who embarked on extensive travels worldwide beginning in 1322. However, the historical existence of Mandeville is debated, as scholars suggest that the name was likely appropriated by a French author to enhance the credibility of the fictional narrative. The work emerged in response to the popularity of Marco Polo's "Travels," and it significantly outperformed Polo’s account in terms of surviving manuscript copies.
Mandeville's memoirs blend familiar classical sources with imaginative storytelling, particularly in its descriptions of exotic lands and mythical creatures. The text features inventive tales, such as the legendary Prester John and his kingdom, reflecting the medieval fascination with the unknown. While Mandeville's writings are recognized today as an early form of fantasy fiction, they also mark a shift towards a more accessible prose style, moving away from religious monopolization of literature. This evolution contributed to the cultural landscape of the Renaissance, facilitating a wider appreciation for travel narratives as vehicles of both knowledge and imagination.
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John Mandeville
Writer
- Born: c. 1300
Biography
Sir John Mandeville is the pseudonym attached to a volume of travels allegedly written in Latin in 1356 and translated therefrom into English and French. The earliest surviving English manuscripts date from c. 1400 and are preceded by French versions, but there is no trace of any Latin original. The once- famous English knight whose name it bears had died long before 1356 and modern scholarship insists that his name must have been appropriated by a French author with the intention of lending a gloss of verisimilitude to a work of pure fiction.
The fictitious Mandeville claims in the text to have been born in St. Albans and to have “passed the Sea” on St. Michael’s Day (29 September) in 1322, spending his life thereafter traveling the world. The French writer Jean d’Outremeuse claimed to have had a confession from a physician named Jean de Bourgognes that he had written the book, but this is pure hearsay and must be considered dubious. Whoever wrote it, the work was obviously produced in response to the popularity of Marco Polo’s Travels—recorded in a Genoese prison in 1298—which had become the most popular “true romance” of the early fourteenth century. Mandeville’s memoirs attempted to outshine Marco Polo’s, and probably succeeded, given that four times as many manuscript copies have survived (about three hundred, as opposed to seventy-five). Mandeville’s memoirs was one of the first English works to be printed by William Caxton’s successor, Wynkyn de Worde.
The early parts of Mandeville’s account are based on relatively familiar classical sources whose contents are recast as a guidebook for pilgrims to the Holy Land, but as his journey extends eastwards toward Cathay, its sources become increasingly unreliable and the author’s embellishments more fanciful. The work makes particularly inventive use of the twelfth century “Prester John letter” allegedly received by the emperor of Byzantium from a Christian emperor of India, which was presumably forged by a Western monk as propaganda in support of the Crusades. Mandeville’s account of Prester John’s imaginary kingdom lent enormous assistance to the preservation of the legend. Other exotic lands described in the text include the griffin-infested Bacharia, where cotton plants bear wool, and the isle of Taprobane, whose hills of refined gold are patiently heaped up and guarded by “pismires” (ants).
Although it is now celebrated as an archetypal traveler’s tale, and hence as an early classic of fantasy fiction, Mandeville’s attachment to the coattails of Marco Polo—who really had visited Cathay—gave his memoirs a different appearance to its intended readers. The work’s historical importance lies in its contribution to a trend away from the monopolization of writing by religion—although it carefully offers an excuse of that sort—towards the democratic use of prose as a vehicle of wondrous enlightenment of a different sort. In that context it is an authentic Renaissance text, which helped to banish the final shadows of the Dark Ages with a deft combination of scholarship and imagination.