Sir John Mandeville

According to Seymour, Mandeville was obsessed with the wealth and opulence experienced during his travels.

It showcases many of the qualities generally thought of as “textbook Mandeville,” like the clear and traceable use of sources interspersed with what may be first-hand experience; the sympathetic treatment of foreign cultural and religious practices interspersed with Catholic dogmatism and ethnocentrism (e.g., the Saracens secretly want to be Christians, some eastern customs are wicked and disgusting); and the narrator’s very human obsession with opulence, wealth, power, and sex.