Marco Polo's Book

This examines the text of Marco Polo's book and the political and ideological context - the crusades, the Mongol missions, the French presence in Italy - in which it was put together by its author and read by its audience. The homogeneity of the "original" Franco-Italian text and the accepted relationship between this text and the Latin recensions is tested by computer analysis. An examination of vocabulary and other textual features draws out the different attitudes and contributions of Polo himself and his various editors and translators. It should be of interest to specialists in medieval Asia, and the history of later medieval Europe.