Term Paper on "Marco Polo: The Explorer in His Own"

Term Paper 6 pages (1977 words) Sources: 2 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Marco Polo: The Explorer in His Own Voice and the Voice of Italo Calvino

Both Marco Polo's the Travels: Marco Polo and the Italian postmodern author Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities relate the exploits of the 12th century adventurer Marco Polo as tales of wonder and amazement. But Calvino's novel creates a state of postmodern wonder in the reader. Obvious fantasy presented as fact causes the reader to ponder unstable nature of truth and factual history of any kind, especially in the subjective narrative of a travelogue. Calvino depicts Marco Polo as chronicling the life of different cities he may or may not have visited to the aging Kublai Khan, whose Eastern empire is in decline. In his actual narrative of the historical explorer, the author Marco Polo attempts to establish some empirical veracity for his quest to travel through the Far East. His audience is Western, and he attempts to secure, rather than destabilize the existence of the historical truth of his journeys.

These two author's narratives of Polo's fantastic adventures in the Far East, one medieval, one contemporary, depict Polo as a kind of storyteller. But as Marco Polo describes his adventures to Kublai Khan, the great leader, their debates take on a philosophical character in Calvino. In his travelogue Marco Polo tells of what he has seen to the West with the eye of an anthropologist, observing strange life in the East, and also with the eye of a man who is judging as well as narrating what he has seen over the past years.

Rather than a mere cataloguer of strange customs, foibles, and figures, Calvino attempts to take the act of recalling a journey into the realm of the poetic and philosophical. It is not what is told, but how unbelievable what is narrated seems to the reader, that is Calvino's main interest as a postmodern author. Invisible Cities shows that even the unbelievable can be framed in the guise of truth, if what happens occurs far away and long ago. Even what is a false travel narrative can be fascinating, and have a kind of metaphorical truth, or seem like the truth, if the teller frames the tale in a particularly compelling matter. Thus despite its lush, strange, and arresting metaphorical imagery, Calvino's tale is related in far more matter-of-fact, rather flat prose, even while the stories Calvino's 'Polo' chronicles are more fantastic than the supposedly real events Polo witnessed. Calvino's Polo does not demand that the reader believe what he hears, rather Polo and Khan debate the nature of truth for reader's observation.

Calvino knows that his story is meant to be fiction, and that he must captivate his more jaded modern reader with even more strange tales; he has no responsibility of convincing the reader he really went to the Far East. The East is explored already, but Marco Polo in his vision still has access to the realm of the fantastic. "In Olinda, if you go out with a magnifying glass and hunt carefully, you may find somewhere a point no bigger than the head of a pin which, if you look at it slightly enlarged, reveals within itself the roofs, the antennas, the skylights, the gardens, the pools, the streamers across the streets, the kiosks in the squares, the horse-racing track. That point does not remain there: a year later you will find it the size of half a lemon, then as large as a mushroom, then a soup plate. And then it becomes a full-size city, enclosed within the earlier city: a new city that forces its way ahead in the earlier city and presses its way toward the outside" (Calvino 129).

Calvino liberally sprinkles anachronistic modern details, like antennae, into Polo's medieval recollections, perhaps to suggest that both the mundane and the fantastic arouse wonder, if located in a mythical city or kingdom. Marco Polo, in contrast, openly asks the reader to be amazed at what he relates and tries to use vocabulary that is ornate and increases distanced wonder, rather than deflates the reader's sense of distanced amazement. Polo demands both amazement and real, factual belief. He is constantly anxious that he is believed because his reputation as an explorer is at stake. This is unlike Calvino, who writes with the understanding that his work is meant to be taken metaphorically, not literally, and even Marco Polo in the Calvino story lacks the urgency of 'being believed' that he exhibits in the historical narrative.

Calvino's attention is given to exploring the act of storytelling, highlighted by his exploitation of Polo's device of using a 'frame tale,' to show how the truth is less important than how the truth is treated, when people are telling stories of fantastic places. Also in contrast to Calvino's postmodern belief in the uncertainty of truth, the real Polo believes in the need to establish veracity for a tale of 'otherness' to be of value. He is trying to convince his Western readership that what he has seen, despite its strangeness, has basis in fact, so he includes statistics and concrete details to create a willingness to believe what he says, rather than a suspension of disbelief like Calvino, and metaphor for Polo is not as important as established reality.

Marco Polo writes: "This city of Kinsai is the seat of one of these nine kings, whose rule extends over more than 140 large and wealthy cities. In the whole province of Manzi, as incredible as it may seem, there are fully 1200 cities" (Polo 223). Believe me, demands Polo, and then, rather than one city, he creates visions of infinite lists of cities, with "fully" numerical specificity, rather than chronicling only fifty-five city-based tales like Calvino. For Calvino, every city has a detailed and rounded character, but for Polo, sheer and excessive numbers are also impressive, and every anecdote creates lists of more facts, unexplored within the text because the number is too vast. Of the cities: "Each of them has a garrison of Khan's troops on the following scale. And you may receive it for certain that in each of those 1200 cities the Great Khan has a garrison and you may take it for granted that no city has a garrison less than1000 men; and some are manned by 10,000, some by 20,000, and some (including Kansai) 30,000; so that the total number of troops is something scarcely beyond reckoning" (Polo 223-224). Even when statistics are omitted, there is an explanation for why this is the case -- that the numbers are beyond reckoning.

However, after reading Calvino's more uncertain narration a question arises in the mind of the reader, in response to the more certain detailing of facts of the real explorer -- how did Marco Polo know all of these things, why are some things uncountable, while other figures are established in excruciating detail? Are these numbers in fact just as mythical as Calvino's absence of secure numbers and real facts? Why is the real Marco Polo so eager to convince the reader with statistics, saying over and over again that the reader must believe, without simply assuming his right to tell about his travels, given that he has experienced them and seen them with his own eyes?

Marco Polo tries to prove as well that he has a discerning anthropologist's eye for differences of custom and belief: But his perspective is judgmental against supposed idolaters who burn the bodies of the dead, or people who believe in astrology or who sing hymns to idols. He watches with horrified fascination when a dead man is burned with his slaves and animals and the money in gold along with the instruments played at the funeral. These are supposed to be at the dead man's disposal in the next world. This description also presupposes a readership that does not burn its dead and looks upon horror at customs alien to their own. Marco Polo assumes his readers are Christians and not idolaters. Although Polo shifts from places to people, he always takes the perspective of an outsider with an eye upon what his Western audience expects to hear.

Calvino, in contrast, focuses, as his title suggests, upon cities, or enclosed communities that have particular standards that conflict with any semblance of reality. He does not judge, rather, his people's strangeness seems like a natural outgrowth of the fantastical atmosphere of the cities. Polo chronicles what he sees, people and places, but Calvino very specifically presents his observations in terms of 'cities' as alternative cultures. The only explanation for the need to describe these cities in their order is given by Polo's rather random typology. He says: "From the number of imaginable cities we must exclude those whose elements are assembled without a connecting thread, an inner rule, a perspective, a discourse" (Calvino 43-44). But this thread seems absent.

One striking rhetorical strategy deployed by Marco Polo is his repetition of the phrase that he "must tell you [the reader]" in explanation… READ MORE

How to Reference "Marco Polo: The Explorer in His Own" Term Paper in a Bibliography

Related Term Papers:

Culture Bias in the Travels of Marco Essay

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… read more

Essay 6 pages (2128 words) Sources: 1 Topic: Religion / God / Theology

---

Walt Whitman Passage to India Term Paper

Walt Whitman; Passage to India

Considering Technology and the Soul in Walt Whitman's "Passage to India"

Though Leaves of Grass was initially a grand commercial failure, Walt Whitman's bold new… read more

Term Paper 5 pages (1467 words) Sources: 3 Style: MLA Topic: Literature / Poetry

---

European Studies When Most People Hear Research Paper

European Studies

When most people hear about the Middle Ages, they will often think of: a knight fighting their enemies or various types of monarchies. While these are all certain… read more

Research Paper 4 pages (1339 words) Sources: 1+ Topic: World History

---

History of Interpersonal Skill Literature Review

Interpersonal Skill of Mesopotamia

The study of interpersonal skills among ancient civilizations like Mesopotamia consists mostly of major innovations and advances in society, technology and human development. Sargon is typically… read more

Literature Review 14 pages (4344 words) Sources: 20 Topic: World History

---

Miracle Worker Is an Inspiring Play Assessment

Miracle Worker is an inspiring play for both students and teachers. Teachers can thrill to the story of a young woman, Annie Sullivan, who truly makes a difference in the… read more

Assessment 4 pages (1052 words) Sources: 0 Topic: Child Development / Youth / Teens

---

View 100+ more related papers  >>