ISKUSTVENA NASPRAM SIMBOLIČKE GEOGRAFIJE: INOVACIJE MARKA POLA U OPISIMA ISTOKA U ODNOSU NA SREDNjOVEKOVNU DIDAKTIČKU KNjIŽEVNOST

Abstract

This article aims to examine Marco Polo’s innovations of the descriptions of the Orient in his travelogue Le Devisement du monde (13th century). Unlike other geographical texts largely transmitted in the Middle Ages (Pierre de Beauvais’ Mappemonde, Jacques de Vitry’s Historia Orientalis, Goussouin de Metz’ Image du monde, La Lettre du Prêtre Jean) and the medieval bestiaries, Marco Polo’s travelogue (transcribed actually by Rustichello da Pisa in Franco-Italian) manifests mostly its practical side: it informs the reader on the landscapes, climate, plants and animals in Asia, as well as the peoples who live there, their customs and the reign of the Great Khan, Kublai. Thus, this text clearly differs from the cosmographical tradition of symbolic representations, which the author questions, moreover, by the explicit deconstruction of some legends (the ones of the unicorn or the salamander, for instance).