Milton's debut non fiction title, The Riddle and the Knight, is a work of historical detection. It follows the trail of Sir John Mandeville, a medieval knight who claimed to have undertaken a thirty-four year voyage through scores of little known lands, including Persia, Arabia, Ethiopia, India, Sumatra and China. Mandeville subsequently wrote a book about his odyssey: it is widely known as The Travels.
The Riddle and the Knight investigates Sir John Mandeville's purported voyage and the shadowy personal biography of the knight himself. It contends that the widely held assertion – that Mandeville's real identity was John de Bourgogne – is based on a flawed testimony of the chronicler John d'Outremeuse.
The book asserts that Mandeville's autobiographical portrait – in which he claims to be a knight living in St Albans – is probably correct. It also contends that Mandeville was forced to flee his native England when his overlord, Humphrey de Bohun, led a troubled rebellion against King Edward II.
The Riddle and the Knight concludes that the greater part of Mandeville's voyage is fabricated or compiled from earlier sources, notably Odoric of Pordenone, Giovanni da Pian del Carpine and Vincent de Beauvais. In spite of Mandeville's extensive borrowings from other works, Milton offers a reappraisal of Mandeville's place in the history of exploration. Mandeville's Travels captured the imagination of the medieval world and was a source of inspiration to Christopher Columbus as well as notable figures from the Elizabethan era, including Sir Walter Ralegh and Sir Martin Frobisher.
Milton assesses Mandeville's influence on English literature. William Shakespeare, John Milton, and John Keats turned to the Travels for inspiration and until the Victorian era it was Sir John Mandeville, not Geoffrey Chaucer who was known as the 'father of English prose'. Milton's book seeks to restore Mandeville to his literary pedestal, as well as advancing the thesis that he should also be considered the father of exploration.
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Famous quotes containing the words riddle and/or knight:
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—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
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Away, away.”
—Unknown. This Is the Key (l. 38–41)