Marco Polo's The Travels: An Analysis

Originally transcribed circa 1300 C.E. by Rustichello da Pisa, Marco Polo’s The Travels is an eternal testament to one of the most epic journeys ever undertaken by an individual man. Throughout its seven hundred year existence, however, The Travels has come under intense scrutiny and controversy regarding its authority and truthfulness, primarily due to Rustichello’s status as a Romance fiction writer, the prevalence of hearsay in The Travels, and the length of time between Marco Polo’s actual undertaking of the journey and the transcription of the work. Prior knowledge of these controversies before examining the text coupled with a thorough analysis of Rustichello’s establishment of authority and truthfulness in The Travels’ prologue grants

33) The characterizing of Marco Polo in this fashion and with these adjectives serves to bolster the historicity of the work as a whole, as the man recounting the tale is a man of substance who appears to have no cause to lie due to his status in a renown pseudo-state in medieval Europe. The stating of “with his own eyes” also solidifies the autopsy of the work, showing that The Travels is (primarily) composed of instances and practices that Marco Polo himself witnessed and as such should be taken as fact. Rustichello’s assertion can be picked apart, however, as Marco Polo would have been describing himself to Rustichello to transcribe, as well as events over a 26 year period. Polo could have easily inflated his virtues and wisdom, and memory could have easily added inaccuracies to events that occurred in the distant past. Such realizations add doubt to Rustichello’s authority, as well as potentially altering the audience’s perception of the work as a whole being entirely