Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-75dct Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-18T11:25:56.507Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Narrative voice and style: ‘ego Marcus Paulo’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2013

Simon Gaunt
Affiliation:
King's College London
Get access

Summary

The aim of this chapter is to examine the ambiguous narrative voice(s) of the Devisement. The ambivalence of first-person pronouns in the text has not escaped remark before, and my own analysis is indebted, in particular, to articles by valeria Bertolucci Pizzorusso, Dietmar Rieger and cesare segre. I hope, however, that my own discussion can go further than previous studies by relating the fundamental ambivalence of first-person pronouns to broader issues of storytelling and reader response as they emerge not only in the narrative frame of the Devisement itself but also in the text's reception. This chapter has three sections. In the first I will examine the text's striking and insistent use of first-person forms, consider how this relates to the equally striking and insistent references by name to Marco Polo himself and then how different versions handle and rework their source's narrative voice. In the second I will look at how narrative voice impacts upon and relates to the representation of space and time both in the reader's apprehension of the world the text describes and in his or her engagement with the text itself. In the final section I will consider how the text's insistence on Marco Polo's role, not just as an observer but as a teller of tales about the world, affects how readers respond to Marco Polo as a figure in the text, as the text's author and as a real-life, or possibly fictional, traveller, something that in turn impacts upon the text's role as a purveyor of knowledge about the world.

Type
Chapter
Information
Marco Polo's Le Devisement du Monde
Narrative Voice, Language and Diversity
, pp. 41 - 77
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×