Episode 89
February 14, 2026
The Travels of Sir John MandevilleVoyage Around My Room
Hosted by Chris Piuma and Suzanne Conklin Akbari
You should realize that no living man can go to Paradise. By land no man can go thither because of the wild beasts in the wilderness, and because of the hills and rocks, which no one can cross; and also because of the many dark places that are there. No one can go there by water either, for those rivers flow with so strong a current, with such a rush and such waves that no boat can sail against them. [...] And so no man, as I said, can get there except through the special grace of God. And so of that place I can tell you no more; so I shall go back and tell you of things that I have seen in the isles and lands of the empire of Prester John, which, relative to us, are below the earth.
We start the new year (a little late) by looking at some old travel literature! Suzanne is revisiting The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, a fourteenth-century guide to visiting the Holy Land and beyond. Chris, on the other hand, is looking at Xavier de Maistre’s Voyage Around My Room, an eighteenth-century account of one man’s triumphant journey from his bed to his writing desk.
![[Episode artwork]](/images/podcast/spouter/episode/s/spouter-season-2.png)
Show Notes.
John Mandeville: The Book of John Mandeville, trans. Iain Macleod Higgins, is the translation Suzanne read; The Book of Marvels and Travels, trans. Anthony Bale, is what Chris read.
Xavier de Maistre: Voyage Around My Room, trans. Stephen Sartarelli. This volume includes the sequel, Nocturnal Expedition Around My Room. Read a sample.
Robert Durling & Ronald Martinez: Time and the Crystal: Studies in Dante’s Rime Petrose contains the text and a translation of Dante’s poems.
Not I (Anthony Page, 1973), a film of Samuel Beckett’s play starring Billie Whitelaw. Chris discusses this more on another podcast.
Suzanne’s article The diversity of mankind in The Book of John Mandeville.
Iain Macleod Higgins: Writing East: The“Travels” of Sir John Mandeville.
Our episodes on the Inferno and the Hereford Mappa Mundi.
Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France, MS nouv. acq. fr. 4515 has the correct Hebrew alphabet at fol. 96v.
Otto of Freising: The Two Cities is his universal history.
Joseph de Maistre, Xavier’s brother.
Laurence Sterne: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.
Our episodes on Boethius and Montaigne.
Daniel Spoerri: An Anecdoted Topography of Chance, trans. Emmett Williams.
Daniel Spoerri: Kichka’s Breakfast.
The map of Spoerri’s desk is included in his Wikipedia article.
Georges Perec: An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, trans. Marc Lowenthal.
Our episode on W, or the Memory of Childhood.
Boris Razon: Écoute.
Melissa Moreton & Suzanne Conklin Akbari, eds.: Textiles in Manuscripts: A Local and Global History of the Book
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