John Mandeville (1)

This was really great to get a true medieval world view. This book has been rather unfairly characterised as a "book of lies" whereas the author actually researched his material to the best of his ability at the time, and it's only the framing (that Sir John Mandeville actually travelled to these places) that is an outright lie. Though there are some wild claims, these were generally thought to be true, and as the editor notes, readers might not take the book seriously if they weren't included.

It was also interesting to see the "wild tales" presented right next to things that were actually true. The narrative might talk about hippopotami and giraffes one moment, dog-headed men and trees that that produce wooly animals as fruit the next. The takeaway being that ALL these things would have been equally as strange and unbelievable to the contemporary European reader. We are so lucky to be living in an era where it's easy to prove one and disprove the other, but I don't think there's anything intrinsically more sensible about a river horse that is known to pursue and devour people (hippopotamus) as opposed to a dragon, for example.

Beyond just the facts, it is noted that there are some rather subversive themes in the book. The author remarks on the beliefs of other cultures without condemning them, even when they conflict with the Christian orthodoxy of Europe at the time, and sometimes compares European society unfavourably to those he supposedly encounters on his travels, enough that some republishers over the years chose to edit him to make him MORE bigoted.… (mere)

This 14th century travel guide to the Holy Land and Far East was included in the libraries of Leonard di Vinci, Christopher Columbus and many others. The book obviously contains much that is fantastical and totally fictitious . Nevertheless, it was still fun reading it and speculating about where there were grains of truth in Mandeville's guide. Even more interesting were Mandeville's not so hidden criticism of European culture when he, for example, quotes the Sultan's criticism of Europeans of not being very Christian. His description of sexual practices in the lands he visited probably provided titillations for his readers in the Middle Ages. Finally, he provides a long explanation about why the Earth is a sphere and why a circumnavigation of the globe should be possible. This disproves the common fiction that people in the Middle Ages thought that the world was flat and ships would fall off the edge.

This book was mentioned in a book I recently finished, The Cheese and the Worms, and was citied as one of the books that led to the miller's heretical thoughts.

This Penguin edition provides a very readable version based upon the wide variety of extant texts and provides some useful footnotes to translate place names to their modern equivalents. The edition also has a very useful introduction and end notes.… (mere)

This is a travel guide written to help pilgrims journey to Jerusalem. For a while its pretty boring but after reaching Jerusalem the author starts describing whats further east in places he has obviously never been too.
Thats when it goes nuts much like the tales or Walter Raleigh or Marco Polo. There are demons, area's cursed with eternal darkness, descriptions of ethiopians who apparently only have one giant leg each etc.
Its bizarre stuff and interesting to see what people actually believed back then.… (mere)

I finally finished this one yesterday. For a short book it took me very long, as I had to check google often to fill my curiosity. The truth is that I would never had attempted, and probably not finished it if I did come across it, if I was not participating in a discussion of [b:The Novel: A Biography|18770233|The Novel A Biography|Michael E.C. Schmidt|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1384016860s/18770233.jpg|26673094] by [a:Michael E.C. Schmidt|660409|Michael E.C. Schmidt|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_50x66-3fbaf32fc1fc48e6ffaf3f63a026f0ff.png].

Most other readers seem to enjoy the last half better - the more fantastic and incredible part of the book - than the first or more grounded in “reality”, even if convoluted and muddling of so many biblical stories and characters. But this was what I did enjoy about this book. Blame it on 4 years of Catholic catechism, but I got caught in the narrative, and found myself even engaged at times. It felt like a biblical stream of consciousness.

I am copying here part of a comment I posted while discussing this book: … I am actually finding the mingling of the whole book of Genesis around one place amusing. The way he goes about saying things like: “Jesus died here, and in this same hill that Adam’s skull was found – after Noah’s flood, of course – and this is where Abraham made the sacrifice to God. Oh, and by the way, Abraham’s house was just around there… and there was this ark, and it they found the 10 commandants tablet and the stick that Moses used to part the Red Sea (…) I do find it very intriguing the necessity to reaffirm the Bible mythology by “wrongfully” interpreting archeological sites as proofs of their Christian belief logic.

I do wish that I had read a version with footnotes and maps instead of the popular domain version I got. I could say that I may go back to it one day and do just that, but who would I be kidding? It was somewhat fun at times, but I gave it a shot and now I am moving on…
… (mere)