The Travels of Marco Polo

A medieval travel account dictated by Marco Polo and written down by Rustichello da Pisa around 1300. It describes Asian lands and peoples through Polo’s reported journeys and accounts from others.

Marco Polo: A Venetian merchant whose reported journeys across Asia became the subject of a medieval travel account. His experiences and recollections supply the account’s first-person narrative.
Travel literature: Writing that recounts journeys and represents places, peoples, or travel experiences. The book is a medieval example whose claims combine description with storytelling.
Kublai Khan: The Mongol ruler who founded China’s Yuan dynasty and ruled from 1260 to 1294. The book’s account of Polo’s service at Kublai’s court is among its central episodes.
Odoric of Pordenone: A Franciscan friar whose early fourteenth-century travel account describes journeys through Asia. His later account offers a separate European narrative for comparing Asian descriptions.
Age of Discovery: A period of intensified European maritime exploration beginning in the fifteenth century. The account’s descriptions of Asia formed part of the knowledge available to later explorers.
Rustichello da Pisa: A medieval Romance-language writer known for composing Arthurian romances and recording Marco Polo’s account. He transformed Polo’s dictation into the book’s surviving narrative form.
Medieval travel writing: Accounts of journeys and distant regions composed in medieval Europe. Its conventions help explain how the book presents unfamiliar lands to European audiences.
Yuan dynasty: The Mongol-led Chinese dynasty founded by Kublai Khan, ruling from 1271 to 1368. Its court and administration dominate the book’s descriptions of China.
William of Rubruck: A Franciscan missionary who described his thirteenth-century journey to the Mongol court. His report provides a contemporary comparison grounded in a different mission and purpose.
Christopher Columbus: A Genoese navigator whose Atlantic voyages for Spain began in 1492. A heavily annotated copy of the book was among the works associated with Columbus’s planning.

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