The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (Penguin Classics) in The Roundtable

Jan 03, 2015 El rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: wanderlust, 14th-centurylit, the-novel-project, fantasy, cultural-studies-and-other

(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 (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. ...more

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Dec 28, 2014 Lauren rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: the-novel-2015

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 is ...more

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Jun 26, 2014 Lise Petrauskas rated it liked it

Shelves: the-novel-a-biography, travel

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 nuanc ...more

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Jan 03, 2015 Petra rated it liked it

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 ...more

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Jan 01, 2015 Rosana rated it liked it

Shelves: 2015, the-novel, roundtable-w15-challenge

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 The Novel: A Biography by Michael E.C. Schmidt.

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 ...more

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Jan 03, 2015 Rachel rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, classics, hardbooks

I was reading this on my nook, got to chapter 35, and just couldn't anymore. So I downloaded the kindle version which I had noticed was shorter. Flipped to where I was and read two more pages, and I was done! Done, done, done!! I went back to the nook version to see why it was so much longer and it turns out I had the book with 3 travelogues in it! So it's kind of funny that I almost quit with only two pages left to go. A table of contents would have been nice there. ...more

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Jan 06, 2015 Sera rated it liked it

Shelves: kindle, classics, non-fiction

Hmmm, ok, so I finished this book finally. I understand the importance of it to both the form and chronologically of the novel, but otherwise, it wasn't my cuppa, especially since Invisible Cities, which I read within the same time frame rocked the house in my opinion.

Sorry, Sir John.

...more

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