It has often been asserted that as a result of 'new discoveries' the factual credibility of Mandeville's description of the world evaporated towards the end of the sixteenth century . The main contention in this chapter is that this is simplistic. Far more complex combinations of factors were at work, and perceptions of Mandeville. The chapter explores how and in what form did people in sixteenth- and early seventeenth- century England encounter Mandeville's Travels, and, in what way, or ways, might they read it. Although the chapter concentrates on printed texts from English presses, people ought not to forget that texts printed on the Continent did circulate in England, and the Continental input into the English printing tradition of Mandeville is clear. A summary diagram explains the descent from the lost original to very free reworkings, the Continental and Insular versions.

The study of the medieval English peasantry began, in the nineteenth century, as an adjunct to the study of other themes. Thus, the history of the manor, of rent, of the early origins of the community, all included inevitable reference to the peasantry. Historians have addressed rural society and the peasantry in particular through sources generated at the level of the manor and the estate. It is also noteworthy that there has been an important shift in emphasis in terms of sources, and especially a heightened focus upon manorial court rolls as the principal object of study for comprehending peasant society and economy in medieval England. Historians of the medieval English peasantry have, with their predominant focus upon matters economic and structural, abandoned most opportunities for close engagement with literary and artistic sources potentially relevant to the study of medieval peasants.

This chapter presents two main objectives: to show that texts modelled upon the Mandevillian mode were not only published and read in early modern England, and they were fascinatingly excluded from the collections of travellers' tales. Balanced against those are two perhaps equally intriguing silences: about the motivations that spurred writers as well as publishers, and about whether or not readers could make distinctions between volumes of the kind categorised as 'Mandevillian' and those based upon actual travels. While early modern tellers of tales might be excused because they could not distinguish between camel meat and beef, no such qualification can be made for those recent and current critics, because attempts at separating travels from 'travel lies' simply highlight the questionable ideological mainstays that underpin their literary and critical foundations. People should celebrate the intellectual skills of the forgers of these texts that continue to have a Mandevillian afterlife.

Richard Brome's satirical travel drama The Antipodes of 1636-1638 is a late example of the Renaissance vogue for English plays which engage with the idea of New Worlds and colonial politics. This chapter focuses on another influential source for Brome's play, Mandeville's Travels, and examines the significance of the relationship between the texts in two related ways. Firstly, Brome's importation to 1630s 'London' of Mandevillian monstrousness is explored, specifically with regard to gender behaviour and sexual appetite. Secondly, the chapter examines the status accorded to Mandeville's text in The Antipodes and in the early to mid-seventeenth century more generally, in order to pose larger political and generic questions concerning the ways in which dramatic texts use travel writing in this period. In The Antipodes, Brome represents the characters' various social problems and health issues as types of madness or moral sickness.

This chapter is concerned with one of the staples of Mandevillian lore, the figure of Prester John, whom the 'knight of transmission' portrays as 'a grete Emperour of Ynde'. It attempts to retrieve part of the Priest-King Arthur's complex itinerary through medieval and early modern imaginations. The emergence of the Prester John legend and its success are first and foremost the products of crusading Europe's ambivalent attitude towards the East. A cited extract shows how, from his very first appearance, Prester John is an embodiment of the ambivalence, caught half-way between the pagan past of classical authorities and the present of Christian Crusaders. A look at the appellations for some of the early manuscripts and editions bears witness to the diversity of responses which the work elicited from its early audiences: it was described with terms as diverse as 'livre', 'geste', 'romant', 'tractatus', 'itinerarium', 'voiage and trauayle'.

The emergence of parliament as an important forum for legal and political matters was a significant feature of the period 1215-1381. Parliament provided a focal point where views were expressed on issues of constitutional import connected to the Crown's jurisdiction and the nature of royal governance, on problems of law and order and on issues within a judicial context. This chapter considers the judicial importance of parliament, which lay in its role as a forum for petitions, as a court of appeal, as a tribunal for the resolution of difficult cases and as a venue for state trials. Assessing the extent and impact of the legal expertise among parliament's constituent members, it is argued that those with legal knowhow and parliamentary experience played an important part in consultative exercises and in the passage of statute legislation at every juncture. The chapter looks at the interaction between local and national legislation.

Alongside investigation of the demographic study of peasant populations there has been closely related work on social and familial structure. This chapter discusses historical work on gender and the condition and role of women in peasant society. It begins by examining the peasant family and household in demographic terms and by looking at household formation, age at marriage and the size and structure of the peasant household, as well as the evolution of the peasant household in the high and late middle ages. Historical interest in household formation owes a great deal to work on post-medieval populations. Clearly, discussion of age at marriage and the process of family and household formation are closely associated with discussion of the size and structure of the peasant household as well as any regional and temporal differences.

This chapter discusses negotiation of certain problems of representation of the Far East and of the Eastern ethnic other, the 'Mandevillian drama' both in the early seventeenth century and in the early twenty- first. It focuses on a particular dramatic text - John Fletcher's 1621 tragicomedy, The Island Princess - and, on a particular production of that text: the Royal Shakespeare Company's revival in 2002-3. The chapter seeks a sense of continuity and difference in medieval and early modern negotiations of the Far East. It discusses the feasibility or otherwise of producing a play inevitably seen primarily in relation to the history of colonialism yet which, in its moment of origin, predated the colonial. The chapter finally addresses the unforeseeable simultaneity of the production and of the Bali bombing of autumn 2002, reflects on a specific postmodern (or post- '9/11') problem.

Law is seen to be a vehicle for royal jurisdiction and royal propaganda as well as providing the catalyst and underlying reason for civil disobedience and popular complaint. This chapter shows the necessity of examining the workings of the mind and the psychological elements of law as a means of identifying the dynamic role of legal consciousness in the prevailing political culture. By emphasising the contexts in which law operated and the ways in which it was represented and understood, it is possible to gain an insight into how law had the capacity to form, affect and direct political attitudes during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The complexity of the medieval experience of law should be seen as a key component in the growth of legal consciousness. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.

In the search for Sir John Mandeville that occupies Giles Milton's The Riddle and the Knight (1996), Milton identifies a range of connections and differences between the 'religions of the book' (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) with the intention of indicating Christian legitimacy in opposition to misguided Islam and demonised Judaism. Regardless of the nature of Mandeville's reflections, there is no doubt that his presentation of Islam was hugely influential. Milton chooses not to refer to Mandeville's depiction of the Prophet Muhammad; this is the focus of this chapter. The chapter considers the source for a small part of The Travels. It is concerned with the uneven character of Mandeville's conception of Islam and Muhammad. The portrayal of Islam in Mandeville's Travels appears ambivalent - the emphasis upon religious common ground between Islam and Christianity does not demonise with the same polemic found in many contemporary texts.

This chapter explores an element of the historiography of the medieval English peasantry, culture. There are two important strands in the historiography of the medieval peasantry which, in terms of their core assumptions, have supposed the presence of a peasant culture at least capable of being posited and, in part at least, examined. The first of these is the examination of peasant engagement with the market, especially in terms of peasants as consumers, and the second is that aimed at exploring peasant agency, especially as regards politics, be that at the level of the manor and estate or on a national scale. The chapter considers each of these in turn before turning to some other, related, features of peasant culture, including relatively new initiatives, typically issuing from beyond studies directed at the medieval peasantry per se, and examines aspects of culture related to and encompassing the medieval peasantry.