Product Description

No mere travel account, the book that Marco Polo wrote after many years in Asia became one of the most influential of the millennium. Historian John Larner here explores for the first time the full range of influence of Polo's Book on the history of geography and exploration, showing why the work cam into being and how it played a key role in the development of European overseas expansion.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1298951 in Books
• Published on: 2001-02-08
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .1 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 266 pages

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

From Library Journal
Larner (Culture and Society in Italy 1290-1420) focuses on the book that Marco Polo produced. After setting the stage, he introduces us to both Marco Polo and the man he believes was his coauthor, Rustichello da Pisa (whom Polo met when both were prisoners of the Genoese). He makes his case by arguing that the type of occupation-specific education that Polo, a member of Venice's mercantile class, had received before his journey to China would not have enabled him to write a literate narrative. Rustichello, on the other hand, was a minor author of literary romance, an ideal partner to sort out Polo's notes and arrange them into the work that captivated a generation. (Its geographical content, descriptions of Chinese cities and Mongol customs, and emphasis on the wealth of the East, Larner argues, inspired the Age of Discovery.) He also refutes Frances Wood's theory (in Did Marco Polo Go to China?, LJ 9/1/95) that he never went to China by presenting reasoned proof that he couldn't have been anywhere else for 24 years. Of interest to students and lay readers with an interest in history; for academic and larger public libraries.ARobert James Andrews, Duluth P.L., MN
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"In Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World, John Larner puts him back on a pedestal as the first and most important inspiration for Europe's eventual conquest of the globe." New Scientist "One of the most delightful features of Larner's book is its description of the medieval and Renaissance visions of the East, which now seem wonderfully, ludicrously ignorant." The Tablet "Larner... setting Polo's narrative and reputation in the historical, geographical and literary contexts which helped construct them, does make things a good deal clearer and proves a compelling counsel for the defence." Michael Kerrigan, Scotsman "[An] erudite and highly personal book... Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World is an eloquent attempt to prove that Marco Polo's main importance was to the discipline. This focus leads Larner to much creative rethinking of things that have puzzled many readers." Jonathan Spence, New York Times Book Review"