I am sorry for being a little late on the blog. There just are not enough hours in the day.
Where to begin? I feel like I have SO much to say about this text! There are a lot of potential areas for discussion.
There are a couple of areas I would like to address...
Some of the girls mentioned their frustrations in class, which I can definitely sympathize with. There were a couple instances where I just wanted to put the book down because I was getting too caught up in all the minutiae. I thought we were supposed to be getting to the Holy Land at some point? At times I also questioned Mandeville's (that is, if he was even a real person) intentions besides that of telling us how to find the Holy Land. I suppose that, for pleasure, he also wants to discuss diversity (or at least appear that way?) And, well, he certainly accomplished that! There were so many places he told us about that I thought my head was going to explode among the thousands of elephants, women who cut off their, erm... yeah, snakes with feet, and cannibals.
BUT. As a travel writer recording all of these things, a central theme to remember here would be the pilgrimages concept. Do not get too annoyed with me because I keep bringing up studying abroad, but I am so enthralled with all kinds of pilgrimages, both local and international. Some of you might already be familiar with this, but I constantly remember the Camino de Santiago, the Chemin de St-Jacques, or the Way of Saint James, which is the pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain. The only actual remains of one of Jesus' apostle Saint James are supposed to rest there. Mandeville even mentions Saint James on page 125. How cool is that? (I did not actually make it to the exact Cathedral, but just being near part of the pilgrimage was AWESOME). I find that fascinating beyond belief, and I love to remember that I have been to a number of "stops" on the pilgrimage route, due to the fact that my uncle lives very conveniently located to it. In fact, when I visited him after leaving Spain, I saw a lot of pilgrims on the road by his house, backpacks and walking sticks and all. Very cool!
A shot I took of the arch in Montesquiou, a teeny weeny little town where my uncle busily chatted up some pilgrims we found. I, speaking zero French, amused myself by wandering around taking pictures and watching a sleeping kitty I saw sitting on a windowsill.
What does all this have to do with Mandeville? Well, it kind of brings me to my next point: the traveller's perspective. Okay, now I have a lot of ideas in my head so I hope I can get them out with at least some remaining shred of coherence. Like I said, I studied abroad, right? So, I could have kept a travel blog myself, like this blog I have now, but rather I think I would make it a daily account of the people, places, things, ideas, sights, sounds, scents, tastes, and everything I saw while I was travelling. I did not, actually, but I did take several thousand pictures (yes, thousands), some of which are on my Picasa. My dad got me an incredible new camera and so that is how I went about documenting everything. Travel writing can be done for personal, economic, and devotional reasons. But then, I wonder why exactly Mandeville did this, which ties into those two reasons I gave in the beginning, about the purpose of his book. Similarly, the perspective of the author is very important, because we have to consider things such as who he was writing this book for, and if he had any other motivations behind it besides those two we discussed previously.
That brings me to my next point, as far as author's perspective (and, due to this concept's universal nature, I think think it can be applied to a lot of different situations): I thought I would mention something fascinating I discovered in Social Psychology a week or two ago. This might be stretching it, but I really hope it's not too terribly irrelevant because trust me, this stuff is über fascinating and I think it has a lot to do with how Mandeville decided to present his information. There is this concept about self-presentation and social perception.
- There is a certain way we want to present ourselves - what I want you to think.
- We, as humans, think and/or worry about how we present ourselves to others.
- We perceive ourselves in a certain way to begin with, and if we think that others around us perceive us in some different way (maybe not necessarily negative, but oftentimes is), then that in turn would affect us negatively.
- Therefore, my self esteem is equal to how I think you evaluated me reflected back on myself.
In case you were still a little confused on this idea of social perception, follow this link to access a Wikipedia page where social perception in the field of social psychology is explained a little more in-depth.
Does that make sense to you? I hope so, because I think that this social-psychological study has a lot to do with the mindset we have discovered while learning about the Renaissance, with all of that "who am I" sort of feelings. I think travel writing really banks on that, and once again, I cannot help but wonder what went through Mandeville's head and how he was actually thinking about his readers (if he was, even). Would he care about his social perception or his self-presentation? I would assume that he would care about how well his book was received, but if some people were angry about it, did he perhaps not care? So many questions!
All in all, the book was pretty good. I signed up for it knowing nothing about it besides a title with the word "Travels" in it (and because I think I "live under the moon," which I find hilarious). Yes, it was pretty boring most of the time, and yes, I got sick of his repetitive strange worldviews and cultural encounters with an almost disrespect for the reader at times. But I also think that I should take it with a grain of salt because I do not presume to know his motives for certain within this new strain of travel writing.
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