[.ca] Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World (ISBN 0300089007)

From Amazon.com:
Marco Polo is important not because he traveled extensively in Asia--other 13th-century Europeans did that--but because he wrote down his experiences for others to read. In this excellent study, John Larner of Glasgow University assesses the impact of Polo's Travels on the intellectual society of his day. The book's contribution to learning was immense, giving medieval Europeans new information that forever changed their understanding of Europe's place in the world. Larner analyzes different versions of the book, originally written in a Genoa prison and translated into many languages within Polo's lifetime. He illustrates a number of fascinating early maps and analyzes Polo's influence on later geographical and literary treatises. Though Polo says very little about himself, Larner finds clues to his personality. Polo left Venice when he was 17 and remained in Asia until he was 41; Europe must have seemed strange to him, even uncouth, after his decades of service to Kublai Khan, Mongol emperor of China, the richest and most sophisticated country in the world at the time. Polo formed a strong affinity with the Mongolians, which may explain his failure to learn the Chinese language or mention Chinese customs such as tea-drinking or foot binding, occasionally suggested as evidence that he never in fact visited China. Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World demonstrates in straightforward language and with satisfying detective work how the record of a man's travels became one the most influential books of the millennium. --John Stevenson

Quel Ver cýha Faccia di Menzogna:
"That Truth which has the Face of a Lie", (p.116), this is John Larner's theme as he reviews Polo's famous book, an account of the Venetian's twenty-four year voyage to the Khan's court in China and back again. Larner explains why Polo's book is an extraordinary achievement, not because it is a great diary, nor because Polo was a particularly perceptive observer, but simply because it was written at all when so little hard data was coming from the East, and thus the broad influence it had on the West. In one passage (p.85), that could usefully have come earlier, Larner explains, "...Who is Marco Polo? He is not an adventurer, a merchant, or a Christian missionary; he is rather a minor Mongolian civil servant who during his years in the East has been an observer or student of the topography and human geography of Asia, of its customs and folklore, of, above all, the authority and court of the Great Khan, all seen from a Mongol point of view. Then, having taken early retirement, he has sought an audience for his memories. Marco left Venice in 1271 at the age of seventeen. He returned in 1295, twenty-four years later, aged forty-one. Take these facts, together with a truly remarkable feature of the Book: that in describing the eastern world there is no evidence of culture shock." This is a book for scholars, for those who have read Polo's work. The endnotes and bibliography extend for almost fifty pages, revealing to the novice the existence of an entire academic sub-stratum devoted to the study, debunking, and defense of Marco Polo. Larner analyses Polo's book and its importance, rather than Polo himself or the importance of his voyage. Readers interested in a voyage almost unimaginable in today's small, well-charted world should start with Polo's book itself, whose very simplicity and dryness inspired Larner but may put off newcomers. Several years after returning from the East, Polo dictated the book to a cellmate in a Genoese prison. Thereafter it was translated and copied dozens of times, with each subsequent interpreter adding his own biases atop Polo's simple prose. Illustrators drew fantastic creatures of the East that Polo never mentioned. As a result, many scholars grew convinced that Polo never made it past the Black Sea and the book was a pack of lies. Larner does a credible job debunking these ideas, although he tends to fall so in love with Marco that his own defenses can appear manufactured, as on p.64 when he ascribes an obvious falsehood in Polo's book to his co-writer's attempts to spice up the text. Perhaps Polo lied, or forgot, or the co-writer misheard, but we have no way to know; there is no evidence one way or the other, and this reader wondered whether Larner's attempts to excuse Polo indicated that he had surrendered his objectivity. On another occasion (p.102), he explains away Polo's virulent anti-Muslim prejudices by suggesting these views are not really so extreme and, in any case, were part of the contemporary worldview. The book is a good one, not without flaws, but instructive, interesting, and eye-opening. The maps and color illustrations are gorgeous, and Marco Polo himself is such a compelling figure that it is simply interesting to read more about him than he reveals in his own words

Marco Polo is Great:
I think that this book helps a lot if you are trying to write a report on him. If I had enough money then I would probably buy the book. The one thing that it needs is more pictures. I like how it gives you just the right amount of information.