Ladan Niayesh and her book The Knight's Legacy of the Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture series celebrated at the bookshop on January 6th!

January 6th, 2011 -here are a few photos from the launch - more can be seen on the events blog! Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture -

A Knight’s Legacy

Mandeville and Mandevillian Lore in early modern England
Edited by Ladan Niayesh

The so-called Travels of Sir John Mandeville (c. 1356) was one of the most popular books of the late Middle-Ages. Translated into many European languages and widely circulating in both manuscript and printed forms, the pseudo English knight’s account had a lasting influence on the voyages of discovery and durably affected Europe’s perception of exotic lands and peoples.

The early modern period witnessed the slow erosion of Mandeville’s prestige as an authority and the gradual development of new responses to his book. Some still supported the account’s general claim to authenticity while questioning details here and there, and some openly denounced it as a hoax. Others looked at it as a reservoir for romance material, a fit object for parody, or a stepping-stone towards a new epistemology of travel and discovery.

Placing themselves at the permeable border between medieval and early modern studies, the essays collected in this volume explore the variety and evolutions of readings and reconstructions of Mandeville and Mandevillian lore in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. After considering the general issues of edition and reception of Mandeville in an opening section, the volume moves on to explore theological and epistemological concerns in a second section, before tackling literary and dramatic reworkings in a final section.

Examining in detail a diverse range of texts and issues, these essays ultimately bear witness to the complexity of early modern engagements with a late medieval legacy which Mandeville emblematises.

Acknowledgements
Contributors
Abbreviations
Foreword
Mary Baine Campbell
Part I: Editions and Receptions
1. Mandeville in England: the early years Michael S. Seymour
2. ‘Whet-stone leasings of old Maundevile’: reading the Travels in early modern England Charles W. R. D. Moseley
3. Mandeville reviviscent: early modern travel tales Kenneth Parker
Part II: Mandevillian Ideologies
4. The four rivers of paradise: Mandeville and the Book of Genesis Leo Carruthers
5. Mandeville On Muhammad: texts, contexts and influence Matthew Dimmock
6. A ‘science of dreams’: ‘the fantastic ethnography’ of Sir Walter Ralegh and Baconian experimentalism Line Cottegnies
Part III: Mandevillian Stages
7. Marlowe’s Tamburlaine: the well-travelled tyrant and some of his unchecked baggage Richard Hillman
8. Prester John writes back: the legend and its early modern reworkings Ladan Niayesh
9. Stage-Mandevilles: the far east and the limits of representation in the theatre, 1621/2002 Gordon Mcmullan
10. The politics of Mandevillian monsters in Richard Brome’s The Antipodes Claire Jowitt
Index

Ladan Niayesh is a Maître de Conférences (Senior Lecturer) in English Literature at the University of Paris VII, France

Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture

216x138mm 224pp
hb 9780719081750 28 February 2011 £55.00
4 b&w illustrations

The Red Wheelbarrow Bookstore will be closed December 24th until the 31st - open again on the 1st in the afternoon !

Photos from John Lichfield: Our Man in Paris at the RWB!

Photos from Thursday evening...

Since 1997 John Lichfield, The Independent’s correspondent in France, has been sending dispatches back to the newspaper in London. More than transient news stories, the popular ‘Our Man in Paris’ series consists of essays on all things French. Sometimes serious, at other times light-hearted, they offer varied vignettes of life in the hexagone and trace the author’s evolving relationship with his adopted country.

Many of Lichfield’s themes concern the mysteries of Paris and its people. Who is responsible for the city’s extraordinary plumbing? How can you drive around the Arc de Triomphe and survive? He also ponders the phenomena that intrigue many foreigners, such as the eloquence of the capital’s beggars and the identity of the intimidating but fast disappearing concierge. Visiting places as different as the Musée d’Orsay and Disneyland, he explores culture high and low as well as the everyday pleasures and problems of living in Paris.

Leaving the capital, the dispatches also cover provincial France, especially a part of rural Normandy where the author has a house. Here he writes of a dysfunctional farmer neighbour, the difficulties of tending an ‘English’ lawn and the threat of a new high-speed road development to his tiny commune.

Nor are more general aspects of French society ignored. A section deals with politics, examining the Sarkozy phenomenon as well as anti-French sentiment in the United States, while another follows the author’s children through the bureaucratic French education system. Predictably, there are pieces on French food and restaurants, while Lichfield also guides the reader through the linguistic minefield of tu and vous as well as exposing the continuing spectre of the German Occupation and collaboration.

Our Man in Paris is a highly readable account of our nearest neighbours and their idiosyncracies. Perceptive and affectionate, it provides a wealth of insights into France and the French.

John Lichfield has been with The Independent since its launch in 1986. He was previously US correspondent and Foreign Editor. In 1999 he was named Foreign Reporter of the year in the UK Press Awards for his dispatches from France. He was born in Stoke on Trent in 1949 and educated in Macclesfield and Cambridge. He is married with three children.

All the copies of 'Our Man in Paris' published by Signal Books (who were present at the launching )sold out - more copies available soon.