Sir John Mandeville: The Book of Marvels and Travels tr. by Anthony Bale, and: The Book of John Mandeville with Related Texts ed. by Iain Macleod Higgins (review)

Perhaps translations are like buses: you wait ages for one to turn up, only to have two arrive almost at once. Such is the case for the Book (as I will generically call it) of “Sir John Mandeville” (c. 1357), a fictional traveler with a name most likely assumed: a literary magpie whose thefts from authentic travel books and related texts produced a work of tremendous importance to later medieval European culture. Surviving in around 300 manuscript copies and at least 10 European languages, Mandeville’s Book needs a place in any undergraduate survey course on medieval literature. It has received a revival in recent times along with reinvigorated interest in medieval travel writing and cross-cultural encounters, so it is fitting that accessible texts be produced to meet the needs of undergraduate and general readers who may not be ready to tackle the available critical editions. Bale’s and Higgins’s admirable and very affordable volumes are both welcome for expanding our range of translation options.

Readers looking for a translation of a Middle English version of the Book for courses in medieval English literature may now turn to Bale’s book to replace C. W. R. D. Moseley’s Penguin Classics version (1983; revised 2005). Bale chooses the widely circulated “Defective” version (working from Oxford, Queen’s College MS 383 and related manuscripts in consultation with M. C. Seymour’s EETS edition, 2002), so called because of its omission of material on Egypt and Sicily. He supplements this with some material from its Anglo-French source (taken from Christiane Deluz’s edition, 2000) and fills the “Egypt gap” with the relevant extract from London, British Library, MS Egerton 1982 (edited by Seymour, 2010). Bale’s translation is thus, in effect, a synthetic version of Mandeville rather than a straight translation of a medieval text, and he is “unabashed” in admitting that his is, in effect, a “new version” (xxx). Bale shows a lightness of touch in translation, which remains close to the syntax of the Middle English while avoiding archaism. To take a sentence almost at random, the original “For to speke of Ierusalem, 9e schal vndirstonde þat it stondiþ faire among hullis, and þere is no ryuer noþer welle but water coming by condyt fro Ebron” (Seymour, 2002) becomes “Next, to speak of Jerusalem: you need to know that it is well situated amongst hills, and there are neither rivers nor wells, the only water comes by conduit from Hebron” (Bale, 39). While the punctuation appears a little odd, it provides a good sense of the rhythms of the original. Bale has also followed a sensible course in modernizing place names and other proper nouns “where they are one step away from a clear contemporary reference,” and in using mainly English forms, except in cases of fantastical names such as “Milstorak” (xxix).

Bale’s introduction offers a pithy and elegant overview of current scholarship on the nature of the text; current theories on authorship (like Higgins, he chooses to remain agnostic on this problem, though W. Mark Ormrod’s recent extension of Michael Bennett’s archival researches into a contemporary Essex Mandeville family in Chaucer Review [2012] provides yet more food for thought); the relevance of St Albans to medieval cartography and geographic discourse; evidence for the Book’s medieval readership; and Mandeville’s chief sources, attitudes, and later influences. Bale’s bibliography is brief but would serve as a basic introduction for newcomers to the topic, aided by his notes on measurements, chronology, and maps. Explanatory notes on the text are kept short, and mainly provide biblical references or give context to potentially puzzling passages. There...