Abstract
Dante Alighieri of Florence and Marco Polo of Venice were contemporaries, born a mere 11 years apart, Marco in 1254 and Dante in 1265. Around 1271, Marco traveled to the East, and returned to Venice sometime in the 1290s, Rustichello da Pisa, ghost-wrote stories of Marco’s oriental adventures. The books, Description of the World, and Il Milione, began to circulate at the time of Dante’s exile. Dante was banished from Florence in 1302, in a reversal of fortunes of the White Guelph party to which he belonged and in which he had been very active, and remained in exile for the rest of his life. He composed the intricate poem that is The Comedy, which gives indications of considerable travel within certain regions of the Italian peninsula but there is no clear indication that he ever traveled beyond the confines of the Italian city states. There has been speculation that he may have traveled as far as Paris and attended the new University of the Sorbonne in the late 1290s. The description of the giants in the pit of hell where he compares them to windmills, has led to further speculation whether he went as far north as the Netherlands. He almost certainly never crossed the English Channel, and he may never have gone south of Rome, or sailed across to Spain or Greece. I am interested in the differences between these two forms of travel and encourage exploration and discussion.
Presenters
Maria Juliana FitzgeraldAssociate Professor Emerita, Creative Writing/English, University of Minnesota, Massachusetts, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2024 Special Focus—Traveling Concepts: The Transfer and Translation of Ideas in the Humanities
KEYWORDS
Marco, Traveler, Explorer, Dante, Poet, Maker, Of, Worlds
