{"id":164,"date":"2012-09-24T18:53:36","date_gmt":"2012-09-24T18:53:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/knownworld\/?p=164"},"modified":"2012-09-24T18:53:36","modified_gmt":"2012-09-24T18:53:36","slug":"travelin-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/knownworld\/2012\/09\/24\/travelin-man\/","title":{"rendered":"Travelin’ Man"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ironically, although we’ve turned our backs on The Odyssey<\/em> and started a new literary voyage in The Travels<\/em>, I can’t help but make constant comparisons between these two works as I read The Travels<\/em>. They are both books about traveling, and visiting strange, unfamiliar areas; however they do that in completely different styles.<\/p>\n

I was struck mostly by the lack of a strong plot in The Travels<\/em>. Most of the story is related in the prologue, and even that sounds more like a summary by a narrator than an actual tale: \u201cIn the year of Our Lord 1260…Messer Niccolo Polo, who was Marco’s father, and Messer Maffeo…were in that city, having come there from Venice with their merchandise.\u201d Then the whole first chapter is basically a geography book. It focuses on descriptions rather than action, which makes sense; this story’s MO\u00a0of entertaining is showing people places they’ve never seen, not giving pulse-pounding adventures. That’s not to say it’s not an interesting read; I particularly enjoyed the last bit about the\u00a0 \u201cSheikh of the Mountains and his Assassins.\u201d Especially how the narrator\u00a0tops it off with\u00a0\u201cLet us now change the subject.\u201d Just when it was getting interesting.<\/p>\n

That does, though, bring up another stylistic difference from The Odyssey<\/em>; and that is the narrative tone. While The Odyssey<\/em> was told mainly through distant, passive narration, this story has a narrator that’s outside the story, but is actively participating in the telling (On that note, who the narrator is could be a topic for discussion, because in the prologue the narrator says \u201cYou may take for a fact that Messer Marco stayed with the Great Khan fully seventeen years; and in all that time he never ceased to travel on special missions.\u201d Then, in chapter one, this line pops up: \u201cI will tell you his story just as I, Messer Marco, have heard it told by many people.\u201d Perhaps the prologue was someone else’s introduction to the story that Marco Polo himself told…I’m not sure). But in any event, whoever is telling the story is really getting into it. He keeps saying things like \u201cLet me tell you about this\u201d (which is funny, because we’re going to have to hear it whether we let him or not), \u201cYou should also know that…\u201d and of course, he’s not afraid to change the subject once a story’s run its course. What I wonder is, is this technique a result of the oral tradition of the tales collected here, or is it a deliberate attempt to give the story the feel of a real person actually telling it to you?<\/p>\n

One more interesting thing I thought I’d bring up is the sense of wonder that this story is rife with. You don’t really find that in The Odyssey<\/em>. Women who can turn people into pigs? One-eyed monsters? Totally normal; or at least no one freaks out because they’ve never seen anything like it before. In The Travels<\/em>, things are constantly being highlighted as unusual. The Town of Fire-Worshippers or the miracle of Baghdad and Mosul are good examples. Again, it just contrasts The Odyssey<\/em> as a work of fiction that takes suspension of disbelief as the status quo, and The Travels<\/em>, where the entertainment comes through surprise.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ironically, although we’ve turned our backs on The Odyssey and started a new literary voyage in The Travels, I can’t help but make constant comparisons between these two works as I read The Travels. They are both books about traveling, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":899,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41603,20187],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marco-polos-travels","category-student-generated"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/knownworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/knownworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/knownworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/knownworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/899"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/knownworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/knownworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":165,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/knownworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions\/165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/knownworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/knownworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/knownworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}