![]() Marco Polo spent much of his adult life traveling the Far East at the service of the Mongol Empire. Exploring their Travels, their editions, and their reception by the public is key to understanding the early development of travel writing literature. Their approach, however, was radically different when presenting their work to their readers. Both men brought great literary accounts of their journeys. Mandeville was a contemporary of Polo, and both traveled the Far East. This is the case of Sir John Mandeville or, much later, Niccolao Manucci. Other writers, however, made their mark with their literary endeavors with quite a different approach. Marco Polo would strike us as one of those explorers or pioneers who shaped the travel literature genre into what it became later. Their discoveries, therefore, were transformed into the texts we know today. ![]() Their transmission into readable accounts is what reaches us, the readers of those marvelous stories. ![]() When we think of the world of discovery, we often think of explorers and pioneers with a certain sense of romance. Marco Polo Arriving at Hormuz from India, artist unknown, circa 1410, from Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |