Mark Cruse, Associate Professor of French, Arizona State University

 

This presentation discusses the ways in which Marco Polo’s Description of the World influenced French cosmography, exploration, and colonization in the sixteenth century. French lay and clerical elites were among the first readers of the Description, manuscript copies of it were produced for  multiple generations of the royal family, and it had an early and broad print dissemination in France in both Latin and French. The Description was an important part of a centuries-long discussion  about France’s place in the world. This paper traces the Description's influence on explorers, cartographers, and cosmographers such as Verrazzano, Fine, Cartier, Alfonse, and Le Testu. Much attention has been paid to the Description's importance for Portuguese and Spanish exploration.  Cruse's goal is to reorient this discussion and to show how Polo's influence shaped generations of    French cosmographers and explorers, with profound historical consequences.