The first book in English to examine one of the most important and
influential texts from a literary perspective.
Le Devisement du Monde (1298), better though inaccurately known in
English as Marco Polo's Travels, is one of only a handful of medieval
texts that remain iconic today for European cultural history, and Marco
Polo is one of only a handful of medieval writers who still enjoys
instant name-recognition. Yet there is little awareness of the
Devisement's complex history and development.
This book examines the text from a fresh, literary viewpoint, drawing
upon a range of different disciplines and approaches: philology,
manuscript studies, narratology, cultural history, postcolonial studies
and theory. It contains comparative readings of multiple versions of the
text in French, Italian and Latin, Rather than offering a Eurocentric
vision of the world grounded in a sense of the absolute alterity of the
non-Christian world as is often asserted, the author shows how the
Devisement expounds a sense of the relative nature of difference,
crucially positioning Marco uncannily between two worlds (East and
West), just as he is positioned awkwardly between two languages, French
and Italian, and (in modern reception at least) awkwardly between two
literary histories. The author also calls into question traditional
accounts of the use of French outside France in the Middle Ages and
offers a re-assessment of Marco Polo's position in the evolution of
European travel writing.
SIMON GAUNT is Professor of French Language and Literature at King's
College London.
