The Travels of Sir John Mandeville presents an ideal of cultural homogeneity. There are four types of people. The first are Mandeville and his readers, the good Christian West. The second, those who are ‘strange’ and different, but may be turned into participants of the first’s culture. The third are Jews, whose difference makes them a threat that must be eliminated. And the fourth, those too different to be considered more than subhuman and who mostly form a monstrous margin beneath all others.
