Mandeville’s Travels was a fabricated text yet widely beloved for its tolerance

Evidence

Mandeville’s Travels, written originally in French by an author who identifies himself as an Englishman, was rendered in no less than four separate Middle English translations by the close of the fourteenth century. The author, whose name was almost certainly not “Mandeville” and who may not even have been an Englishman, is unlikely to have traveled any further than the nearest monastery library; at least, the sources of his narrative appear to be textual rather than actual experience. In spite of this inauthenticity (or perhaps because of it), Mandeville’s Travels was extraordinarily popular throughout the Middle Ages and into the early modern period, perennially appealing due to its rich evocation of the scope and diversity of the world. … The book is also remarkable for the relative tolerance exhibited in its characterization of non-Christian religions: the depiction of Islam, in particular, is arguably the most accurate account to be found in Western literature before the seventeenth century. The same cannot be said, however, of the characterization of the Jews in Mandeville’s Travels: they are the only group to be completely excluded from the polyphonic harmony of the author’s world. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 294

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to how a fabricated, inauthentic text can become culturally canonical — parallels other apocryphal bestsellers and the theme of invention-as-authority.