In his Book of Marvels and Travels, Sir John Mandeville describes a journey from Europe to Jerusalem and on into Asia, and the many wonderful and monstrous peoples and practices in the East. Written in the fourteenth century, the Book is a captivating blend of fact and fantasy, an extraordinary travel narrative that offers some revealing and unexpected attitudes towards other races and religions. It was immensely popular, and numbered among its readers Chaucer, Columbus, and Thomas More. Here Mandeville tells us about the Sultan in Cairo, the Great Khan in China, and the mythical Christian prince Prester John. There are giants and pygmies, cannibals and Amazons, headless humans and people with a single foot so huge it can shield them from the sun. Forceful and opinionated, the narrator is by turns learned, playful, and moralizing, with an endless curiosity about different cultures. Anthony Bale provides a lively new translation along with an introduction that considers questions of authorship and origins, the early travel narrative, Crusading and religious difference, fantasy and the European Age of Discovery, and Mandeville's pervasive popularity and influence. The book includes helpful notes on historical context that provide insights into medieval culture and attitudes. There are also three maps, an index of places and a general index, and a note on medieval measurements. About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The Book of Marvels and Travels (Oxford World's Classics)

Literature & Fiction

Mandeville, John

Bale, Anthony

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press

A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages /anglais

Penguin Uk

This interdisciplinary study explores images of Jews and Judaism in late medieval English literature and culture. Using four main categories - history, miracle, cult and Passion - Anthony Bale demonstrates how varied and changing ideas of Judaism coexisted within well-known anti-semitic literary and visual models, depending on context, authorship and audience. He examines the ways in which English writers, artists and readers used and abused the Jewish image in the period following the Jews' expulsion from England in 1290. The texts are analysed in their manuscript and print contexts in order to show local responses and changing meanings. This important work opens up fresh texts, sources and approaches for understanding medieval anti-semitism and shows how anti-semitic stereotypes came to be such potent images which would endure far beyond the Middle Ages.

The Jew in the Medieval Book: English Antisemitisms 1350–1500 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, Series Number 60)

British & Irish

Cambridge University Press

The Jew in the Medieval Book: English Antisemitisms 1350-1500 (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature)

A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages: The World Through Medieval Eyes

A captivating journey of the expansive world of medieval travel, from London to Constantinople to the court of China and beyond. 
Europeans of the Middle Ages were the first to use travel guides to orient their wanderings, as they moved through a world punctuated with miraculous wonders and beguiling encounters. In this vivid and alluring history, medievalist Anthony Bale invites readers on an odyssey across the medieval world, recounting the advice that circulated among those venturing to the road for pilgrimage, trade, diplomacy, and war. 
Journeying alongside scholars, spies, and saints, from Western Europe to the Far East, the Antipodes and the ends of the earth, Bale provides indispensable information on the exchange rate between Bohemian ducats and Venetian groats, medieval cures for seasickness, and how to avoid extortionist tour guides and singing sirens. He takes us from the streets of Rome, more ruin than tourist spot, and tours of the Khan’s court in Beijing to Mamluk-controlled Jerusalem, where we ride asses across the holy terrain, and bustling bazaars of Tabriz. 
We also learn of rumored fantastical places, like ones where lambs grow on trees and giant canes grow fruit made of gems. And we are offered a glimpse of what non-European travelers thought of the West on their own travels. 
Using previously untranslated contemporaneous documents from a colorful range of travelers, and from as far and wide as Turkey, Iceland, North Africa, and Russia, A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages is a witty and unforgettable exploration of how Europeans understood―and often misunderstood―the larger world. 20 illustrations; 6 maps

History

Africa

W.W.Norton&Company

Europe

A fresh account of the medieval mystic, traveling pilgrim, and pioneering memoirist Margery Kempe. &nbsp; This is a new account of the medieval mystic and pilgrim Margery Kempe. Kempe, who had fourteen children, traveled all over Europe and recorded a series of unusual events and religious visions in her work The Book of Margery Kempe, which is often called the first autobiography in the English language. Anthony Bale charts Kempe's life and tells her story through the places, relationships, objects, and experiences that influenced her. Extensive quotations from Kempe's Book accompany generous illustrations, giving a fascinating insight into the life of a medieval woman. Margery Kempe is situated within the religious controversies of her time, and her religious visions and later years put in context. And lastly, Bale tells the extraordinary story of the rediscovery, in the 1930s, of the unique manuscript of her autobiography.

Margery Kempe: A Mixed Life (Medieval Lives)

Religion & Spirituality

Reaktion Books

In Feeling Persecuted, Anthony Bale explores the medieval Christian attitude toward Jews, which included a pervasive fear of persecution and an imagined fear of violence enacted against Christians. As a result, Christians retaliated with expulsions, riots, and murders that systematically denied Jews the right to religious freedom and peace. Through close readings of a wide range of sources, Bale exposes the perceived violence enacted by the Jews and how the images of this Christian suffering and persecution were central to medieval ideas of love, community, and home. The images and texts explored by Bale expose a surprising practice of recreational persecution and show that the violence perpetrated against medieval Jews was far from simple anti-Semitism and was in fact a complex part of medieval life and culture. Bale’s comprehensive look at medieval poetry, drama, visual culture, theology, and philosophy makes Feeling Persecuted an important read for anyone interested in the history of Christian-Jewish relations and the impact of this history on modern culture. 

Feeling Persecuted: Christians, Jews and Images of Violence in the Middle Ages

John Lydgate wrote the 'Lives of Ss Edmund & Fremund' at the request of his abbot, William Curteys, to commemorate the stay of the young King Henry VI at the Benedictine abbey of Bury St Edmunds from Christmas Eve 1433 to shortly after Easter 1434 when Henry was received into confraternity. The work survives in thirteen manuscripts or fragments, and BL MS Harley 2278, on which the present edition of the 'Lives of Ss Edmund & Fremund' is based, was the copy of the poem presented to Henry VI, probably before 1444. The 'Lives' consists of a prologue, the Life of St Edmund as books one and two, the Life of St Fremund as book three, a conc1uding prayer to St Edmund, an envoy, and an address to Henry VI. The volume also presents the three texts that make up the 'Extra Miracles of St Edmund' which are found in four of the later manuscripts of the 'Lives' and independently in one manuscript. This edition of the 'Lives of Ss Edmund & Fremund' is the first to establish the text on the basis of the readings of all the manuscripts, and is also the first to include the 'Extra Miracles'. The edited texts are followed by a commentary, textual notes, a glossary of proper names, and a selective glossary.

John Lydgate's 'lives of SS Edmund & Fremund' and the 'extra Miracles of St Edmund': Edited from British Library MS Harley 2278 and Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 46 (Middle English Texts)

Universitatsverlag Winter

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