Marco Polo and the encounter of east and west / edited by Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Amilcare Iannucci ; with the assistance of John Tulk.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Iannucci, Amilcare A.

Akbari, Suzanne Conklin.

Tulk, John.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

Polo, Marco.

Polo, Marco, 1254-1323?.

East and West.

Travelers' writings--History and criticism.

Travelers' writings.

Travel, Medieval.

Geography, Medieval.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (349 p.)

Place of Publication:

Toronto ; Buffalo, NY : University of Toronto Press, c2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Few figures from history evoke such vivid Orientalist associations as Marco Polo, the Venetian merchant, explorer, and writer whose accounts of the "Far East" sparked literary and cultural imaginations. The essays in Marco Polo and the Encounter of East and West challenge what many scholars perceived to be an opposition of "East" and "West" in Polo's writings. These writers argue that Marco Polo's experiences along the Silk Road should instead be considered a fertile interaction of cultural exchange. The volume begins with detailed studies of Marco Polo's narrative in its many medieval forms (including French, Italian, and Latin versions). They place the text in its material and generic contexts, and situate Marco Polo's account within the conventions of travel literature and manuscript illumination. Other essays consider the appropriation of Marco Polo's narrative in adaptations, translation, and cinematic art. The concluding section presents historiographic and poetic accounts of the place of Marco Polo in the context of a global world literature. By considering the production and reception of The Travels, this collection lays the groundwork for new histories of world literature written from the perspective of cultural, economic, and linguistic exchange, rather than conquest and conflict.

Contents:

Introduction : East, west, and in-between / Suzanne Conklin Akbari

Text, image, and contradiction in the Devisement dou monde / Debra Higgs Strickland

Marco Polo's Le devisement dou monde and the tributary east / Sharon Kinoshita

Marco Polo's Devisement dou monde as a narcissistic trauma / Marion Steinicke

Currents and currency in Marco Polo's Devisement dou monde and The book of John Mandeville / Suzanne Conklin Akbari

Plucking hairs from the great Cham's beard : Marco Polo, Jan de Langhe, and Sir John Mandeville / John Larner

The world translated : Marco Polo's Le devisement dou monde, The book of Sir John Mandeville, and their medieval audiences / Suzanne M. Yeager

Calvino's rewriting of Marco Polo : from the 1960 screenplay to Invisible cities / Martin McLaughlin

From alterity to holism : cinematic depictions of Marco Polo and his Travels / Amilcare A. Iannucci and John Tulk

The perils of dichotomous thinking : a case of ebb and flow rather than east and west / Susan Whitfield

Marco Polo : meditations on intangible economy and vernacular imagination / Yunte Huang

Marco Polo, Chinese cultural identity, and an alternative model of east-west encounter / Longxi Zhang.

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [297]-323).

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

1-4426-9328-2

1-4426-8858-0

OCLC:

923771994