Travel with Close Readings: ‘The Travels of Sir John Mandeville’

Travel with Close Readings: ‘The Travels of Sir John Mandeville’

To continue our summer of travel with Close Readings, Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley look at the medieval bestseller The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. The fictional traveller’s fantastical descriptions of different places, peoples and animals across the Holy Land and Asia are almost certainly drawn mainly from other textual sources, rather than direct experience by the unknown author, and yet the work was often used as a source of reference as well as entertainment or prurient interest. Many of the writer’s observations of different political and religious practices could be taken as radical critiques of his homeland. Yet while it often urges appreciation of other cultures, the book is undoubtedly xenophobic and racist in places, foreshadowing the European quest for colonisation: indeed, Christopher Columbus had a copy with him when the Santa Cruz sighted land on 12th October 1492. Get 50% off a 12-month subscription to Close Readings with the code 'SUMMER50' here: https://lrb.me/crtravelmb Find our full Travel with Close Readings playlist here: https://lrb.me/travelwebmb Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Travel with Close Readings: Byron’s ‘Don Juan’

Travel with Close Readings: Byron’s ‘Don Juan’

Few poets have had the courage (or inclination) to rhyme ‘Plato’ with ‘potato’, ‘intellectual’ with ‘hen-peck’d you all’ or ‘Acropolis’ with ‘Constantinople is’. Byron does all of these in Don Juan, h...

16 Elo 1h 53min

Amia Srinivasan: The Impossible Patient

Amia Srinivasan: The Impossible Patient

Not for the first time, theorists of politics are turning to the unconscious and its strange workings – repression and fantasy, libido and death drive, disavowal and displacement – to understand the p...

12 Elo 1h 2min

Travel with Close Readings: ‘The Prelude’ (Books 9 and 10) by William Wordsworth

Travel with Close Readings: ‘The Prelude’ (Books 9 and 10) by William Wordsworth

Wordsworth was not unusual among Romantic poets for his enthusiastic support of the French Revolution, but he stands apart from his contemporaries for actually being there to see it for himself (‘Thou...

9 Elo 47min

Adam Tooze: Electrostates, Petrostates and the New Cold War

Adam Tooze: Electrostates, Petrostates and the New Cold War

China is racing ahead in electrification, while the US turns its back on green energy in favour of a new era of fossil fuel machismo. An alignment between the three major petrostates – the US, Saudi A...

5 Elo 1h 15min

The long history of Black voter suppression in the US

The long history of Black voter suppression in the US

In April this year, the US Supreme Court struck down Louisiana's voting map on the grounds that state lawmakers had violated the constitution by creating a second district with a majority of Black vot...

31 Heinä 1h 1min

On Politics: Burnham’s First Week

On Politics: Burnham’s First Week

Andy Burnham’s early promises to end rough sleeping and sort out social care won’t surprise anyone who’s followed his political career, but his apparent interest in the structures of Whitehall was les...

29 Heinä 1h 6min

Nolan v. Homer

Nolan v. Homer

It could be argued that Christopher Nolan has been remaking the Odyssey for his whole career, and his latest film revisits many of the themes of his earlier movies, as once again a male protagonist em...

26 Heinä 52min

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