Un si long voyage : Marco Polo Le Devisement du monde

Abstract

Devisement of the world, more known under the title of Book of the Marvels (1298) tells the journey of Marco Polo, Venetian trader, up to the court of Koubilaï Khan, in China. This book stays in the memory collective as the most famous travel story because it made discover parts of the country, practices and unknown inventions in Europe. It is a question in this article of putting in the context of the XIIIth century a text, which tells customs outside the borders of the Christendom by drawing from epics, but also from antique literature to restore a picture of the East. Testimony of the approach of the otherness, its posterity participates widely in the exotic infatuation and the desire for discoveries, according to the Christopher Columbus’s logbook.

Keywords

• marco polo, voyage, orient, altérité, exotisme.