|
|
Article: Transcendent `Travels' of Mandeville.(Books)(On Books)(Special Editions: University Presses)
- Article from:
- The Washington Times (Washington, DC)
- Article date:
- June 8, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 News World Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
Just as all roads lead to Rome, so do the sea and overland routes of English travel writing take the reader back to Sir John Mandeville. A poem such as "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," for example, whisks its reader chronologically backward from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's late 18th century to his sources, who included the early 17th-century travel writer Samuel Purchas, who in turn reaches back to the 14th century and "The Book of John Mandeville," saluting Sir John as "our Countriman."
"The first extant European globe, made at Nuremburg in 1492," says Iain Macleod Higgins toward the end of his new book, "cites John Mandeville several times as an authority." ...