The Metrical Version of Mandeville's Travels

Today's task: The Metrical Version of Mandeville's Travels, (ed. M. C. Seymour, Early English Text Society).

Okay, so this was a pretty cute text. I feel weird saying that about a 2950-line poem in Middle English, but it's true. Something about it is just very...sing-songy and light. Much of the moralizing and the in-depth discussions of the other versions have been excised (of course) and the rhymes don't often seem too laboured, so the overall effect is very...cute.

There are a few key points in the text that I think would make interesting intersections with the longer prose versions:

(Botanical)
1. The episode with the Trees of Sun and Moon 68
2. Hagiography / the origin of roses 30
3. People who live on the scent of apples 67
4. The pepper narrative 51
5. The discussion of balm 41

(Fantastical/weird)
6. Monopeds 50
7. The country of Amazons 49
8. The mention of Uther Pendragon and Merlin 57
9. The seemly men / unseemly women 48

(Authority)
10. The purpose of the book 3
11. On shortening the book 4

I don't have any concrete thoughts about how these cross over between poetry and prose, but it's something I'll look at more closely later.


Here is an index of plant references from my edition of the book:

Abundance -- 41, 69
Apple -- (Sodom) 35; 67
Balm -- 41, 46?
Bamboo -- 56
Banana -- 41
Cedar -- 65
Cloves -- 54
Corn -- 75
Cotton -- 54
Cypress -- 64
Fig -- 41
Forest -- 64, 70
Garden -- 34, 41
Ginger -- 54
Grape / Wine -- 15, 58, 75
Lemon -- 51
Mace -- 54
Mastic -- 18
Nutmeg -- 54
Olive -- 38, 67
Pepper -- 51
Reed -- 16
Rice -- 75
Rose -- 30
Saffron -- 72
Spices -- 52, 54, 75
Sponge -- 16
Thorn -- 16
Tree -- (Bread) 55; (Cotton) 63; (Flour) 55; (Honey) 55; (Olive) 67; (Poison) 55; (Sun and Moon) 68; (Wine) 55; (Wool) 60
Wine / Grape -- 15, 58, 75
Wood -- 54