Mandeville

New
Paperback
2008
$12.25

The Travels of Sir John Mandeville was one of the most popular books of the later Middle Ages. Purporting to describe the circumnavigation of an English knight through Africa, India, and the Middle East in 1322, the narrative is a fantastical collection of sights: seas, islands, phoenixes, pyramids, rocks that enchant ships and apes that contain human souls, interwoven with geographical descriptions that are perfectly accurate. Matthew Francis's new collection is a sequence of poems that celebrate and give voice to Mandeville, in his own words, caught as he is between physical and symbolic geographies, between a world that is round and one that has Jerusalem at its centre. And all of it narrated in the terse, solitary, conflicted and strangely passionate voice of this medieval Crusoe whose very existence was disputed.

Synopsis

The Travels of Sir John Mandeville was one of the most popular books of the later Middle Ages. Purporting to describe the circumnavigation of an English knight through Africa, India, and the Middle East in 1322, the narrative is a fantastical collection of sights: seas, islands, phoenixes, pyramids, rocks that enchant ships and apes that contain human souls, interwoven with geographical descriptions that are perfectly accurate. Matthew Francis's new collection is a sequence of poems that celebrate and give voice to Mandeville, in his own words, caught as he is between physical and symbolic geographies, between a world that is round and one that has Jerusalem at its centre. And all of it narrated in the terse, solitary, conflicted and strangely passionate voice of this medieval Crusoe whose very existence was disputed.

$12.25

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 64
Edition: Main
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 20 Mar 2008
ISBN 10: 0571239277
ISBN 13: 9780571239276
Book Overview: Mandeville by Matthew Francis is a fascinating collection of poems reworking the travels of the enigmatic medieval explorer Sir John Mandeville.

Author Bio

Matthew Francis is the author of two Faber collections, Blizzard and Dragons, both shortlisted for the Forward Prize, and editor of W. S. Graham's New Collected Poems. He has also published a study of Graham, Where the People Are, and a novel, WHOM. in 2004 he was named as one of the Next Generation Poets. He is Reader in Creative Writing at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and lives in West Wales with his wife, Creina.