Reading Prester John: Cultural Fantasy and its Manuscript Contexts
The medieval legend of Prester John, a mythical Christian emperor of India, has been the object of both scholarly and popular fascination for well over a century and a half. In a new study, John Eldevik examines the origins of the famous "Letter of Prester John," which popularized the myth in twelfth-century Europe, with particular attention to how this text found its way into various manuscripts and how the content associated with it in those books provide clues about it's meaning and significance for the communities that copied it.