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HIS 133: Travelers' Tales

PAPER 2: THE WORLD FROM ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW

When people travel, they usually learn something about the culture of the people they encounter. What we sometimes forget is that travelers' encounters with "alien" cultures also had a significant impact on the ways in which travelers viewed themselves and their own culture.

The Travels of Sir John Mandeville was one of the most widely read books of late medieval and early modern Europe. The earliest manuscripts, which were handwritten, appeared in the middle of the 14th century (c. 1356-66). Although the book was originally written in French, it was wildly popular, and by 1400 had been translated into every major (and some minor) vernacular European language. There are over 300 surviving handwritten copies of the book. Once the printing press was invented, it was one of the first books to become available as a printed text. Leonardo da Vinci owned a copy of it; so did Christopher Columbus (who wrote lots of notes in the margins). As the editor of your edition of the text says, "The huge number of people who relied on the Travels for hard, practical geographical information in the two centuries after the book first appeared demands that we give it serious attention if we want to understand the mental picture of the world of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance." (p. 9)

We don't know much about the author of the book. Most scholars think he was an English knight. We don't even know how far he traveled - or even if he traveled at all! But whatever the case may be, Europeans for two centuries read this book as a true account; and in so doing, they absorbed many of the lessons that the "Mandeville author" wanted to teach his fellow Europeans, not only about the world, but about themselves.

One scholar has suggested that "Mandeville is deliberately setting up more or less differing mirror societies as a commentary on Christian practices and failings." Your second writing assignment is to write a 4-5 page essay in response to the following question: "To what extent and in what ways does Mandeville use the "exotic" societies he describes to critique his own culture?"

As with your first essay, you should:

$ make sure that your paper is focused