Medieval readers consumed travel fiction as entertainment, not fact.
Evidence
Although his account of the marvels of the East is full of the most amazing nonsense, there is no reason to believe that his readership was seriously misled by his fabrications. Mandeville wrote to entertain and his audience read to be entertained. This was an age when travel writers were not required to stick rigorously to the facts. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 101
Categorization
- XREF: Challenges a modern assumption that pre-modern audiences naively believed what they read — relevant to how credulity is framed in the Saidian debate.