Medieval France
(d. 1372). Composed at Liège ca. 1357 by an otherwise unidentifiable English knightvoyager, Mandeville’s Voyages d’outre-mer was the most popular secular book of its day, surviving in over 250 manuscripts and some ninety incunabula, including translations into Latin, English, Danish, Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish, Czech, and Irish. Of the three distinct versions, the earliest was certainly composed in French on the Continent. An “insular” version, done ca. 1390 in England, is a Middle English classic, whose anonymous author is sometimes considered the “father” of English prose. The Voyages popularized the newly discovered wonders of the East, including much fabulous material, and gives a lengthy description of the Holy Land. Mandeville compiled the work at third hand from French translations by Jean Le Long of Saint-Omer (d. 1383) of genuine Latin travel accounts from the early 14th century. Le Long’s translations of five Latin travel accounts are found together in several manuscripts, of which the best known is the Livre des merveilles (B.N. fr. 2810), copied ca. 1400 for the duke of Burgundy. Mandeville also drew liberally from Vincent de Beauvais’s Speculum naturale, Marco Polo’s Devisement du monde, Gossuin de Metz’s Image du monde, and Brunetto Latini.
Though filled with fabulous accounts, the Voyages relates in a simple and unselfconscious prose the sum of medieval knowledge of the world. It explains, for example, why the world is round and incorporates many other accurate observations. Through the centuries, it has been alternately praised for its style and richness and damned for absurdities and plagiarism. The author has on occasion been confused with a Liège physician, Jean de Bourgogne, and with the writer and notary Jean d’Outremeuse. Mandeville is also credited with a French prose lapidary found in 15th-century manuscripts and early printed editions.
William W.Kibler
[See also: BRUNETTO LATINI; IMAGE DU MONDE; LAPIDARY; MARCO POLO; OUTREMEUSE, JEAN D’; VINCENT DE BEAUVAIS]
Mandeville, Jean de.
Mandeville’s Travels, Texts and Translations, ed. M.Letts. London: Hakluyt Society, 1953. [Edition of B.N. fr. 4515 and the English “Egerton” translation.]
——. Mandeville’s Travels, ed. Michael C.Seymour. Oxford: Clarendon, 1967. [Edition of the English “Cotton” translation.]
——. The Metrical Version of Mandeville’s Travels, ed. Michael C.Seymour. London: Early English Text Society, 1973.
——. The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, trans. C.W.R.D. Moseley. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983. [Modern English translation.]
De Poerck, Guy. “La tradition manuscrite des Voyages de Jean de Mandeville.” Romanica gandensia 4(1955):125–58.
Goosse, A. “Les lapidaires attribués a Mandeville.” Dialectes belgo-romans 17(1960):63–112.
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