Marco Polo and the discovery of the world / John Larner.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Larner, John, 1930-2008.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Polo, Marco, 1254-1323? Travels of Marco Polo.

Polo, Marco.

Voyages and travels.

Travel, Medieval.

Asia--Description and travel--Early works to 1800.

Asia.

Polo, Marco--Influence.

Polo, Marco. Book of Ser Marco Polo.

Exploration--History.

Cartography--Europe--History.

Explorers--Italy--Venice--Biography.

Civilization, Medieval--13th century.

Local Subjects:

Polo, Marco.

Polo, Marco--Influence.

Polo, Marco. Book of Ser Marco Polo.

Exploration--History.

Cartography--Europe--History.

Explorers--Italy--Venice--Biography.

Civilization, Medieval--13th century.

Physical Description:

xiii, 250 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), maps (some color) ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

New Haven [Conn.] : Yale University Press, [1999]

Summary:

After many years in Asia, Marco Polo wrote one of the most influential books of the past millennium. No mere travel account, Polo's Book is a work that played a key role in the development of European overseas expansion. In this engaging and authoritative book, historian John Larner explores for the first time the full range and influence of Polo's Book on the history of geography and exploration. Larner assesses the findings of modern scholarship and offers an original account of Marco Polo and his family, of how and why the Book came into being, and of its reception over the centuries.

Beginning with a discussion of the extent of European knowledge of Asia early in the thirteenth century, Larner considers what is known about Marco Polo's life and the composition of his text. He examines the Book's scope and sources (vindicating its author from recent claims that he never visited China), as well as the nature of Polo's cooperation with his co-author Rustichello da Pisa. He traces the manuscript forms and translations of the Book in the Middle Ages, its influence on western cartographers, its fortunes in the climate of fifteenth-century Humanism, the possible extent of its encouragement of Columbus, and its later evolution into such new guises as the object of historical scholarship and exotic curiosity. Finally, Larner provides a fresh view of the enigmatic Marco Polo who, despite a deliberate cultivation of impersonality, continues today to engage the attention of readers.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Images of Asia and the Coming of the Mongols 8

Chapter 2 The Polos 31

Chapter 3 Marco Polo and Rustichello 46

Chapter 4 The Making of the Book 68

Chapter 5 The Description of the World 88

Chapter 6 Varieties of the Book 105

Chapter 7 Marco, Merchants and Missionaries 116

Chapter 8 Marco among the Humanists 133

Chapter 9 Columbus and After 151

Chapter 10 Jesuits, Imperialists and a Conclusion 171

Appendix II Times of Travel to China by Land 187

Appendix III Marco Polo and World Maps of the Fifteenth Century 191.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [224]-242) and index.

ISBN:

0300079710

OCLC:

40990259