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Abstract
This essay looks at ways in which travellers tales seek to authenticate themselves by claiming to be ‘truthful’ accounts of first hand experience. Aparallel is drawn between the travel writer and the translator, since both claim to bring versions of otherness to their readers, rewritten and presented in accessible (domesticated) language and form. Yet both are highly manipulative literary activities, forms of rewriting that contain an inherent journey, and both depend on collusion between writer and reader in the creation of an illusion of authenticity. The Travels of Sir John Mandeville is cited as an example of the fantastical traveller's tale.