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The Travels of Marco Polo: The Complete Yule-Cordier Edition, Vol. 2
As many schoolchildren know, Marco Polo (c. 1254-1324) was a Venetian traveler who, with his father and uncle, traveled to the Orient and brought back fabulous stories of exotic lands and people to an unbelieving medieval Europe. The journey lasted 25 years, 17 of which were spent at the court of Kublai Khan, the Chinese emperor. At some point after his return home, Marco Polo was imprisoned by the Genoese, then at war with Venice. It proved to be a fortunate incarceration, for while in prison Marco Polo dictated the story of his travels to a fellow-prisoner, a writer named Rustichello. The book that resulted is one of the greatest books of all time — a vast treasury of valuable observations on the people and geography of the Near East and Asia, with detailed descriptions of cities, customs, crops, animals, and wildlife, laws, political systems, and more.
Reprinted here in two volumes, with extensive editorial apparatus and some 200 illustrations, The Travels of Marco Polo offers a sweeping panorama of Persia, China, Japan, and other lands in the last half of the thirteenth century. This Dover edition is reprinted from the third edition (1903), revised and updated by Henri Cordier, of the magnificent translation made by Sir Henry Yule in 1871. Of inestimable value are the extensive notations by Yule that clarify and expand each chapter of the book. Also included in the Dover edition is a memoir of Sir Henry Yule by his daughter and the extensive addenda that Cordier published in 1920. Nearly 200 black-and-white illustrations (many double-page spread) and 32 maps and site plans augment the text.
Reprinted here in two volumes, with extensive editorial apparatus and some 200 illustrations, The Travels of Marco Polo offers a sweeping panorama of Persia, China, Japan, and other lands in the last half of the thirteenth century. This Dover edition is reprinted from the third edition (1903), revised and updated by Henri Cordier, of the magnificent translation made by Sir Henry Yule in 1871. Of inestimable value are the extensive notations by Yule that clarify and expand each chapter of the book. Also included in the Dover edition is a memoir of Sir Henry Yule by his daughter and the extensive addenda that Cordier published in 1920. Nearly 200 black-and-white illustrations (many double-page spread) and 32 maps and site plans augment the text.
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First published January 1, 1285
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About the author
Marco Polo
318 books189 followersFrom 1271, Marco Polo of Venice explored Asia to 1295; the only available
Travels of Marco Polo
accounted China to Europeans until the 1500s.
Marco Polo spun a tale of how people gave a life of sensual pleasure and a potion to make young Assassins to yearn for paradise, their reward for dying in action, before their secret missions.
Stories and various documents also alternatively point to his ancestry, originating in Korčula, Croatia.
People well knew this trader. He recorded his adventures in a published book. People lost the original copies of his works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo
Marco Polo spun a tale of how people gave a life of sensual pleasure and a potion to make young Assassins to yearn for paradise, their reward for dying in action, before their secret missions.
Stories and various documents also alternatively point to his ancestry, originating in Korčula, Croatia.
People well knew this trader. He recorded his adventures in a published book. People lost the original copies of his works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 29, 2017
I noticed something with western writers like Marco and Mark Twain, they keep mentioning how Arabs/Muslims hate Christians. And as an Arab and Muslim, I feel bound to say this: the period that Marco is describing, witnessed the Crusade campaigns on the East, and everyone know that the Crusaders not only killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims but also their fellow Eastern Christians to satisfy their greed. and for that it is not surprising that Arab and Muslims at that time would hate "Crusaders" as it is normal for anyone to hate anyone who's trying to invade their homeland, and again this hatred is for Crusaders as invaders not as Christians.
July 12, 2016
Much like vol. 1, this volume is filled with tons of additional information. Worth the read if you want to get the most out of Marco Polo's travels.
August 15, 2021
Polo traveled from Italy across Asia and back during the years that the Mongol Empire reigned over most of the territory. The version I read was the Yule edition, which coming from the nineteenth century was likely a bit too old to keep the reading interesting.
The Yule edition was heavily annotated, such that the notes were often two or three times the length of Polo's original text. Polo's text itself might have been fairly interesting, although it would have been extremely repetitive. Many a chapter recounts how a given region was infidels, etc. Polo uses nearly the exact same wording each time. Of course, the annotations are necessary because many of Polo's place names are now out of date, such that it's hard to know what location he is writing about. However, the nineteenth-century place names are also many times out of date, such that the annotations weren't much help. And this truly seemed a scholarly edition insofar as the notes recounted numerous opinions with regard to what Polo actually meant every location that he wrote about.
A case in point would be Madagascar. Polo talks of giraffes and other creatures that are not at all on the island. Most scholars l think he has the wrong place and meant another location. After all, the big southern island would have been off his route anyway. Of course, Polo wasn't averse to writing about nearby places that he'd heard about. This really is a kind of geography book in many ways and was likely fascinating to readers of the time.
This isn't to say that there aren't parts that are fascinating even now. His account of Japan, I found a bit interesting, even if most scholars dispute his historical accounts of the battles that he describes. Another particularly intriguing account was of a nation that consisted of two islands. On one island only women lived, and on the other only men lived. The men would visit the women's island for three months of the year. Children lived with the women until the age of fourteen, at which time the boys moved to the men's island. Not many people, even in Yule's time, though the account accurate or true. Finally, there is the religious variety that he encountered, something we often don't think of now when we think of Asia. That is, in Polo's time, while there were plenty of Buddhists and others of so-called Eastern religious affiliations, in his time, there were also a fair number of Muslims and Nestorian Christians scattered across the continent all the way across China.
Readers would likely be better off with a more contemporary edition.
The Yule edition was heavily annotated, such that the notes were often two or three times the length of Polo's original text. Polo's text itself might have been fairly interesting, although it would have been extremely repetitive. Many a chapter recounts how a given region was infidels, etc. Polo uses nearly the exact same wording each time. Of course, the annotations are necessary because many of Polo's place names are now out of date, such that it's hard to know what location he is writing about. However, the nineteenth-century place names are also many times out of date, such that the annotations weren't much help. And this truly seemed a scholarly edition insofar as the notes recounted numerous opinions with regard to what Polo actually meant every location that he wrote about.
A case in point would be Madagascar. Polo talks of giraffes and other creatures that are not at all on the island. Most scholars l think he has the wrong place and meant another location. After all, the big southern island would have been off his route anyway. Of course, Polo wasn't averse to writing about nearby places that he'd heard about. This really is a kind of geography book in many ways and was likely fascinating to readers of the time.
This isn't to say that there aren't parts that are fascinating even now. His account of Japan, I found a bit interesting, even if most scholars dispute his historical accounts of the battles that he describes. Another particularly intriguing account was of a nation that consisted of two islands. On one island only women lived, and on the other only men lived. The men would visit the women's island for three months of the year. Children lived with the women until the age of fourteen, at which time the boys moved to the men's island. Not many people, even in Yule's time, though the account accurate or true. Finally, there is the religious variety that he encountered, something we often don't think of now when we think of Asia. That is, in Polo's time, while there were plenty of Buddhists and others of so-called Eastern religious affiliations, in his time, there were also a fair number of Muslims and Nestorian Christians scattered across the continent all the way across China.
Readers would likely be better off with a more contemporary edition.
November 8, 2017
As with volume 1, there was more explanatory material than there was of Polo's original text. Explanatory text is necessary, as the place names which Polo uses are not the ones we know these lands as today. Additionally, Polo did not actually visit many of he places, and simply reported on them hearsay. With that in mind, the editor took the time to explain what was fact and what was most likely fiction in Polo's descriptions.
May 3, 2023
For anyone interested in Medieval/Renaissance travel and China and surrounds, this is worth reading. It was surprising to read how much he got right. I expected more exaggeration and fantasy.
January 20, 2017
All I can say is, having read volume I, I felt compelled to read volume Ii. That is as good as it gets.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews