Table Of ContentWriting East
THE MIDDLE AGES SERIES
RuthMazo Karras,General Editor
EdwardPeters,FoundingEditor
Acompletelistof books inthe series
isavailablefrom the publisher.
Writing East
The "Travels" of Sir John Mandeville
lain Macleod Higgins
PENN
UniversityofPennsylvaniaPress
Philadelphia
Copyright©1997UniversityofPennsylvaniaPress
Allrightsreserved
PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmericaonacid-freepaper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Published by
UniversityofPennsylvaniaPress
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania19104-6097
LibraryofCongress Cataloging-in-PublicationData
Higgins,lainMacleod.
WritingEast: the"travels"ofSirJohnMandeville/lain MacleodHiggins.
p. cm. - (TheMiddleAgesseries)
Includes bibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN0-8122-3343-3 (alk,paper)
I.Mandeville,John, Sir.ltinerarium. 2.Geography,Medieval.
3.Travel,Medieval. I. Title. II.Series.
G370.M2M3634 1997
910.4-dc21 96-45601
CIP
Contents
Preface vii
Abbreviations xi
I. Introduction I
2. HereBegins the BookofJohnMandeville, Knight 28
3."ChasesEstranges"in Constantinopleand theEastern
Mediterranean
4. Marvels, Miracles, and DreamsofRe-Expansionin Egypt
and the HolyLand 92
5.EarthlySymmetryand the MirrorofMarvelousDiversity
in and AroundYnde 124
6. Faithand Powerin the GreatKhan's Cathayand
PresterJohn'sLand
7. Personaland Pagan Pietyin the DirectionofParadise 203
8.HavingCometo RestDespiteMyself 239
9. Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited 301
Index 315
This page intentionally left blank
Preface
DEFINED IN THE MOST GENERALTERMS, the present bookisacasestudy
in two subjects: textmaking and worldmaking. By worldmaking, a term I
borrow from Nelson Goodman, I mean here the discursive construction of
aspecificgeographical, natural, human, andtheologicalworldoutofalready
existingworlds thatwere likewise fashioned discursivelyand/orcartographi
cally. By textmaking, I mean in particular the common medieval practice
ofmaking new works out of "olde bokes" by recomposing them, whether
through turning already existing material from various sources into asingle
"original" compilation, asVincent ofBeauvais didin makinghis famous en
cyclopedia, or through "overwriting" a given precursor, as Chaucer did in
writingTroilusandCriseyde over Boccaccio'sIIFilostrato. Inbothcases,then,
the term "malting" refers not to exnihilocreation, but rather to remaking,
whichistosaythatanyremadetextorworldstandsinadynamicand dialogic
relationto its sources andpredecessors.'
Theworldin question here istheEast betweenConstantinopleandthe
Earthly Paradise, as it was known and imagined by Latin Christian writers
andcartographersbetweenthetwelfthandthefifteenthcenturies,andspecifi
callythat East as represented in the particular text in question: Mandeoille's
Travels, to use the modern editorial title, orTheBook ofJohnMandeville,asI
preferto callit after its commonmedievaldesignation." Originallycompiled
in French sometime around 1360, this diverting, instructive, and moraliz
ing tour ofthe medieval East quickly became one ofthe most popular and
widely circulated writings of its time, being translated into nine other lan
guages, includingLatin, andoftenreworkedin the process. As aresultofits
extensive circulation and variously free or faithful transmission, TheBook is
extantin somethree hundredmanuscripts that represent two majorvariants
ofthe Mandeville-author'soriginalcompilationand somehalfadozendiffer
entforms, includingtwoshortverse redactions.
There are, as Brian Stock has written, "few genuinely privileged texts"
for students of the Middle Ages "and many works which, for other than
purely literary purposes, have important stories to tell." As aparadoxically
3
suigenerisrepresentativeofthefluid, omnivorous,long-lived,and consequen
tial genredefinedby thetraveler's bookaboutElsewhereandOtherness, The
viii Preface
BookofJohnMandeville isone such work, and WritingEastismy attempt to
explore and comment on some ofthe stories that this multilingual "multi
text"hasto relate both aboutitselfand aboutwhatmightbecalledmedieval
Orientalism. At the heart ofthis exploration and commentary, as I explain
in the introduction, is an extended palimpsestic or "topological" reading of
TheBookthatfollows the workin itsunfoldingfrom on~ endofthe worldto
the other while paying close attention to its rhetorical, thematic, and ideo
logical elements and strategies. Above all, my reading seeks to do justice to
TheBook'sintratextual aswell asits intertextual multiplicity by focusing not
onlyon the Mandeville-author'sdialogicmannerofoverwritinghisprecursors
and sources, but also on the ways in which the resulting text was itselfren
dered and rewritten in the most widely circulated, influential, or interesting
"isotopes"- allofwhichillustrateBernardCerquiglini'sclaimthat"medieval
writing does not produce variants; it is variance.?" In addition to the two
main Frenchversions (the Continental and InsularVersions), I examine sev
eralEnglishrenderings (theBodley,Cotton,Defective,Egerton,andMetrical
Versions), twoGermantranslations (MichelVelser'sand OttovonDiemerin
gen's), and the compressed Latin redaction consulted by many Renaissance
cosmographers (the so-calledVulgateLatinVersion).
Writing East, then, is an experiment in literary and cultural criticism,
whose principal innovation is the attempt to read a historically significant
medieval book in a manner responsive to the alterity of its multiple textual
existence. Such inter- and intra-textualmultiplicityisthe overwhelmingfact
about medieval writing, and yet it has not often affected the ways in which
scholars make use of"olde bokes" for literary, cultural, or historical studies,
eventhoughreadingfor textualvariance allowsusto seethingsthatwewould
otherwise miss and draws our attention to the active and engagednature of
muchculturalproductionand reproduction. Byimplication, the presentcase
study articulates a model for reading medieval writing in its various forms
ofmultiplicity. Someofits specificclaimsabout the mandevilleanmulti-text
and medievalculturewill no doubt be subjectto correctionand dispute, but
I hopethatmy generalmethods and aimswillprovokefurther reflectionand
speculation, whether on The BookofJohn Mandeville, late medieval culture,
or certainbasicpractical and theoreticalquestions relevant to anyattemptto
make senseofadistantand differentpast throughitstexts.
Anyscholarly studyowesmorethanitsauthorcanknoworacknowledge
to the influence and workofothers.This onehas its metaphoricalgrandpar
ents in the work ofScott D.Westrem and Mary B.Campbell,whose studies
haveshownhowmuchcan be learnedfrom lookingcloselyat medieval geo
graphical and travel writings. My most immediate debts-over and above
