A01=Simon Gaunt
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Author_Simon Gaunt
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=DSBB
COP=United Kingdom
Cultural History
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Devisement du Monde
East and West
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Language
Language_English
Literature
Marco Polo
Medieval
PA=Available
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
softlaunch
Travel
Product details
- ISBN 9781843843528
- Weight: 412g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 18 Jul 2013
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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The first book in English to examine one of the most important and influential texts from a literary perspective.
Le Devisement du Monde (1298), better though inaccurately known in English as Marco Polo's Travels, is one of only a handful of medieval texts that remain iconic today for European cultural history, and Marco Polo is one of only a handful of medieval writers who still enjoys instant name-recognition. Yet there is little awareness of the Devisement's complex history and development.
This book examines the text from a fresh, literary viewpoint, drawing upon a range of different disciplines and approaches: philology, manuscript studies, narratology, cultural history, postcolonial studies and theory. It contains comparative readings of multiple versions of the text in French, Italian and Latin, Rather than offering a Eurocentric vision of the world grounded in a sense of the absolute alterity of the non-Christian world as is often asserted, the author shows how the Devisement expounds a sense of the relative nature of difference, crucially positioning Marco uncannily between two worlds (East and West), just as he is positioned awkwardly between two languages, French and Italian, and (in modern reception at least) awkwardly between two literary histories. The author also calls into question traditional accounts of the use of French outside France in the Middle Ages and offers a re-assessment of Marco Polo's position in the evolution of European travel writing.
SIMON GAUNT was Professor of French Language and Literature at King's College London.
