John Mandeville – The Travels of Sir John Mandeville

„There is also another isle where the people live just on the smell of a kind of apple; and if they lost that smell, they would die forthwith”

Immediately popular when they first appeared around 1356, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville became the standard account of the East for several centuries.

Ostensibly written by an English knight, the Travels purport to relate his experiences in the Holy Land, Egypt, India and China. Mandeville claims to have served in the Great Khan’s army, and to have travelled in 'the lands beyond’ – countries populated by dog-headed men, cannibals, Amazons and Pygmies. Although Marco Polo’s slightly earlier narrative ultimately proved more factually accurate, Mandeville’s was widely known, used by Columbus, Leonardo da Vinci and Martin Frobisher, and inspiring writers as diverse as Swift, Defoe and Coleridge. This intriguing blend of fact, exaggeration and absurdity offers both fascinating insight into and subtle criticism of fourteenth-century conceptions of the world.

C. W. R. D. Moseley’s translation conveys the elegant style of the original, while his newly revised introduction outlines the work’s history. Also included are appendices, an index of place names, new notes and updated further reading.

This translation first published 1983   źródło opisu: Penguin UK, 2005 źródło okładki: www.umsl.edu