Essay on "Culture Bias in the Travels of Marco"

Essay 6 pages (2128 words) Sources: 1

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Culture Bias in the Travels of Marco Polo

Taking Marco Polo largely at his word, translator and editor Ronal Latham tells us in his introduction to the Travels of Marco Polo that the thirteenth-century Italian explorer was not lying when he told readers, in the prologue/sales-pitch in the prologue of the book, that he "had traveled more extensively than any man since the Creation" (Latham, 7). Surely, this claim helped to sell copies, and the tales of Marco Polo's travels was a bestseller in his own time, and continues to be read and reproduce a fair amount of scholarship even today. A cursory overview of the current criticism regarding the text reveals that most of the current debates revolve around the historical accuracy and veracity of the claims that Marco Polo makes. Latham himself notes that there "are other features of the book that are as likely to be due to Rustichello [the compiler and author of one degree or another of the Travels] as to Marco" (Latham, 18). Other critics have suggested that Marco Polo himself inflated his and his family's stature, and others tat he had little or nothing to do with the book at all, but merely told some stories to Rustichello that were hugely embellished.

Regardless of who actually wrote which portions of the Travels of Marco Polo, there is a certain strain of Orientalism and exoticism that runs through the book, and would come to pervade European culture for centuries to come. The narrative's description of the villages and court that Marco Polo encounters are full of fantastical imagery and mention of magic and sorcery. No doubt part of this, like he claim made in the prologue, was an attempt to sell copies; times were not so different then, and sensationalism sold just like it does today. But at the heart of this sensationalism is an ethnocentrism that is readily apparent in much of the book. The strangeness of the Middle and Far Eastern cultures would certainly have been shocking to the boy of fifteen when he first encountered them, if he truly did encounter everything he says, but is telling is not so much altered by a toe of surprise as one of judgment. There are many moments throughout the text where the narrator's own Western and Christian culture and perspective barred him from seeing -- and thus representing -- the other cultures encountered in the Travels in a fair and objective light. Whether the result of first-hand observation, or a compilation of stories heard from men who claimed them to be true, or even if some sections were simply made up, this text bears definite evidence of the perspective that created it. The Western and Christian culture and perspective of the author of the Travels of Marco Polo colors his account of the Middle and Far East to a huge extent.

The Prologue itself actually contains evidence of the influence that culture and perspective played in the writing of this work. The claim that Latham mentions, about Marco having traveled farther than any man since the Creation, is actually delivered in far more Christian terms: "from the time when our Lord God formed Adam our first parent with His hands down to this day there has been no man, Christian or Pagan, Tartar or Indian...[that has traveled so far] as this same Messr Marco Polo" (Travels, 33). Even the surface meaning of this sentence belies its ethnocentric disposition towards Christianity; time is measured from the Biblical creation of Adam by the Judeo-Christian (or more aptly, given the likely authorship, simply Christian) God, and the collective possessive "our" preceding "Lord" and "first parent," though a common idiomatic usage of the word even among Christians today, seems to imply a certain "otherness" in anyone who does not believe in this Lord God. The author of the Travels has, as a matter of course, set the Christians apart from the Oriental subjects described in the rest of the book.

In addition, the Christians are the first group of people listed of the four explicitly mentioned, as though they would be the obvious and presumptive supplier of the first extensive globe-trotter. The careful dichotomy of the sentence's construction, too, contrasts the various loosely-defined ethnic groups mentioned in a way that is most favorable to the Western perspective. First, there is the obvious "Christians or Pagans," with Christians in the prominent first position. The pagan, the stranger and "other," is in the weaker syntactical position. The same perspective shoes itself in the second grouping, "Tartar or Indian." The Tartar's were any of a number of ethnic groups in the areas in and around present-day Russia; the Polos actually lived in Tartar inhabited areas, and they would have been somewhat known in the West from trading. The Indians, however, were more highly romanticized, and had been since the time of Alexander (Latham, 7-8). Even the two latter "strange" groups are arranged hierarchically according to their familiarity with Westerners.

The deeper implications of this sentence reveal still more of the Western and Christian perspective seeping into the narrative. Though their intensity had slackened quite a bit, the Crusades were an on-again, off-again engagement for much of the thirteenth century, and any mention of "Pagans" or other references to non-Christian heathens was sure to stir up a lot of mixed emotions in the European Christian readers. The very purpose of the book, in fact, was to further exoticize the Middle and far East as a place where Marco Polo had been, but where the reader had not gone and almost certainly never would go. It was the allure of this strange and rarely heard-of land that required the book to be written, as the prologue continues; "For this reason he made up his mind that it would be a great pity if he did not have a written record made of all the things he had seen and heard by true report" (Travels, 33). The effect of the last two words of this sentence, "true report," as well as the other assurances in the prologue that the book is entirely factual, is all geared towards making the reader expect a vast departure from the world he is used to. There would be no need to assure the readers that the book contained the truth if the facts, people, places, and events it described were to be readily believed. The book cannot but go on as a sensational account of a strange and intriguing land. The author of the Travels of Marco Polo is serving up Middle and Far Eastern culture as a spectacle for Western eyes; a view which cannot help but be biased.

The Western desire to se the Orient as exotic and scarily strange is heavily apparent in the Travels' description of the people and customs encountered in the heretofore un- or under-reported areas of Asia. Take, for example, this typical description of a people foreign and certainly strange already to the readers of the Travels: "The people of Kashmir are also idolaters, speaking a language of their own. Their knowledge of devilish enchantments is something marvelous. They make their idols speak.[...] I may say that they are the past masters of idolatry and it is from them that idols are derived" (Travels, 78). Not only does the author identify the people of Kashmir as having a "language of their own," separating them even from the other heathen idolaters he has encountered, he actually credits them with the invention of idol worship. Such "knowledge" would have been a very juicy tidbit of religious naughtiness in this time, two centuries before the Renaissance was due even to begin. The magical elements he describes them performing -- the talking idols, and even the changing of the weather -- would all be considered witchcraft, and though this was not Puritan New England, this too would have been an exotic and forbidden glimpse into what the author of the Travels has carefully crafted as a dark and mysterious world.

Another interesting thing about this passage is the author's complete lack of an attempt to make the people of the Kashmir appear at all familiar -- there is no mention of eating or cooking habits, living arrangements, marriage or child-rearing -- it is not as if one expects a full anthropological text, but the Travels seems to take no interest whatsoever in the daily life of the majority of the people that narrator claims to have encountered. This is odd, considering that he must have dwelled amongst at least some of these people, for periods however brief, during his journey. Yet for the most part he keeps his observations limited to a quick paragraph of some shocking, tantalizing, or prurient details for each of the groups he encounters in this section of the journey. For one group, he notes almost nothing except that they are good huntsmen and that the women wear trousers with a lot of pleats at the hips because… READ MORE

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