Mandeville's Travels and Medieval Myths of Africa on the Early Modern English Stage

Abstract

Mandeville's Travels is a fourteenth century book of pilgrimage, travellers' tales, and fantasy that through its long afterlife has manifested itself in varied literary forms. The extent of Mandeville's influence through its reincarnations and reuses has provided many channels through which myths of Africa have been repeated, constructed, and promulgated.1 Myths are an essential element of the narrative, which purports to be a record of the experiences of Sir John Mandeville, Knight of St. Albans, as he journeyed to Turkey, the Holy Land, Africa, India, China, Indonesia, and Persia from 1322 until 1356. Both the number of extant manuscripts and the number of recorded print editions attest to the book's popularity (Seymour ed. Mandeville's Travels xiii; Phillips 194).2 Between 1496 and 1640, at least nine editions were produced, including two by Thomas East in 1568 and c.1583 (Pollard & Redgrave 389). This availability in print assisted in the circulation of myths available to playwrights searching for exotic marvels and monsters to turn into material which would captivate their European audiences. As a source of geographical information, Mandeville was cited as an authority by.

Shakespeare in Southern Africa Vol. 18 2006: pp. 21-28