1322 - APPARENTLY, in this year a knight calling himself John Mandeville leaves England for a religious vacation to the middle east and beyond.

 

1357: The knight, old and gouty after 35 years of travel, releases his memoirs.  They describe his trips and the crazy things he saw overseas: how to get to Constantinople, bananas, the Holy Land, tattoos, the Great Khan, cannibals with their faces on their chests, dog-headed men, monopods, intelligent cyclopses, all presented matter-of-factly alongside facts about islands and rivers.

 

In case anyone is skeptical of any of this, Mandeville makes one final stop: ROME, where the pope himself confirms that everything John has said about his life is true.

 

1440: The printing press is invented.  The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, until now told only through handwritten copies and live readings, explodes in popularity.  Mandeville himself becomes known as a "great man" - not just the greatest explorer of all time, but the father of English prose.

 

1492: Christopher Columbus packs his copy of Mandeville and sets sail for the version of Asia described in its pages. He looks forward to meeting freaks, doesn't find any.  Eventually he commits atrocities against native Caribbeans and his bosses throw him in jail for it.  Like generations before him and generations after, Columbus dies believing in the truthfulness of his Mandeville text.

 

Over the next hundred years, some credibility issues pop up.  Turns out the first leg of Mandeville's trip, as far as Jerusalem, had been lifted from the letters of foreign monks who had actually gone there, and the marvelous fantasylands beyond were proving to be less marvelous than advertised.

 

1598: Sir John Mandeville is removed from official royal books of great English explorers.  He joins King Arthur as a semi-mythic figure, generally believed to have been real, but whose story has supernatural elements.

 

Six years later, the English arrive in a place they call "Virginia".  Centuries of brutal colonial violence ensue.

 

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2020: It sure has been a wild ride, but after almost 700 years, John Mandeville travels to his most OUTRAGEOUS destinations yet: THE 2020 MONTREAL INTERNATIONAL ANIMATION FESTIVAL,  THE 2021 CUZCO UNDERGROUND CINEMA FESTIVAL, and THE 2022 OJO ILUSO ANIMATION FESTIVAL.