Marco Polo’s Le Devisement du Monde – Narrative Voice, Language and Diversity by Simon Gaunt (review)

Simon Gaunt, professor of French language and literature at King’s College London sheds new light on Le Devisement du Monde (1298), better known in English as Marco Polo’s Travels, analyzing the work through the lens of a multi-disciplinary approach applying concepts in philology, manuscript studies, narratology, cultural history and post-colonial studies. The illustration on the cover, taken from the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford, depicts Marco Polo’s departure from Venice. This image opens the pages of Gaunt’s research with a lush, colorful rendering of a city of white washed turrets, sailing vessels of gleaming wood gliding on the gentle ripples of a light gray river, as if competing for attention with larger than life white swans, and nobles and merchants in jewel colored robes pontificating on cobbled through fares. This is an apt imagining of the beginning of the much celebrated voyage, whose telling has survived for hundreds of years, long after its novelty and use as a real time travelogue had expired.

Who exactly was Marco Polo? Was he even a real person? If yes, were his adventures in the East just figments of an overactive imagination? Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant who lived between 1254 and 1324. He remains a recognizable European figure even today, and is closely associated with relations between Europe and the lands of the East. Other contemporaries had travelled to the East, but none produced an account of their travels as enduring as Marco Polo’s Le Devisement du Monde (Description of the World). The book recounts the twenty-four years Marco spent living in Asia. The text was originally written in an Italianate French hybrid and was co-authored with Rusticello da Pisa, an author and compiler of Old French romances.

Marco was the son of a prominent Venetian merchant family who had long had had ties with Asia through their trade with that region. Along with his father and uncle, Marco travelled through the territories of a hegemonic Mongol empire, eventually becoming a favored administrator of the Mongol Khan. Marco traveled the length of the empire on behalf of the Khan, tasked to return to the Mongol court to describe his travels and state of affairs in the provinces. As a trusted advisor of the Khan, Marco was in a unique position to travel an empire stretching from Russia and the Black Sea to the South China Sea. On a mission for the Khan to take a Mongol princess to marry the new Persian Ilkhan, Arghun, Marco even sailed around the Indian subcontinent, stopping in many places. Marco Polo eventually returned to Europe in 1298, and in lieu of a real welcome he was held in a Genoese prison subsequent a naval battle between Venice and Genoa. It was during this time when he was held captive that the Devisement was written. Marco eventually returned to Venice where he lived out the remainder of his days as a prosperous merchant and celebrity author of the hugely popular Devisement.

The Devisement has inspired much debate and analysis, scholarly and popular alike. Many books have explored topics as varied as: translation surveys, adaptation of the Devisement, reconstructions of the physical journey, biographies of Marco Polo’s life, scholarly analysis of the Devisement text for content of travels and biography, scholarship on the medieval European representation of Asia, philological studies, semantic studies, studies of the iconography of the illustrated manuscripts of the Devisement, literary studies in relation to narrative voice, treatment of marvels, analysis through post-colonial approaches. Simon Gaunt trains an insightful eye on the Devisement text focusing on literary criticism, style, narrative voice and modes of representation. His contribution is most welcome as this approach has been underrepresented in the field. Gaunt analyzes the different versions of the text, from the Franco-Italian redaction of 1298, proving that this was most likely the original, to the L redaction Latin translation of the...