国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
| |||||||||
|
The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 | |
マルコ=ポーロ卿の記録 : vol.1 |
POLO'S INFLUENCE ON GEOGRAPHY
129
Squire's Tale from these old accounts of Tartary, and especially
from Marco Polo, because he has been so well edited by Colonel
Yule, there is very little probability that Chaucer consulted any
of them. It is much more likely that he found these details
where he found more important parts of his story, i.e. in some
lost romance. But if we must suppose that he provided his
own local colour, we have no right to pin him down to using
Marco Polo to the exclusion of other accessible authorities."
Mr. Pollard adds in a note (p. xiii.) : " There are some features
in these narratives, e.g. the account of the gorgeous dresses worn
at the Kaan's feast, which Chaucer with his love of colour could
hardly have helped reproducing if he had known them." H. C.]
XIII. NATURE OF POLO'S INFLUENCE ON GEOGRAPHICA I
KNOWLEDGE.
79. Marco Polo contributed such a vast amount of new
facts to the knowledge of the Earth's surface, that Tardy opera
one might have expected his book to have had a tion, and
causes
sudden effect upon the Science of Geography : but thereof.
no such result occurred speedily, nor was its beneficial effect
of any long duration.
No doubt several causes contributed to the slowness of its
action upon the notions of Cosmographers, of which the unreal
character attributed to the Book, as a collection of romantic
marvels rather than of geographical and historical facts, may
have been one, as Santarem urges. But the essential causes
were no doubt the imperfect nature of publication before the
invention of the press ; the traditional character which clogged
geography as well as all other branches of knowledge in the
Middle Ages ; and the entire absence of scientific principle in
what passed for geography, so that there was no organ com-
petent to the assimilation of a large mass of new knowledge.
Of the action of the first cause no examples can be more
striking than we find in the false conception of the Caspian
as a gulf of the Ocean, entertained by Strabo, and the opposite
error in regard to the Indian Sea held by Ptolemy, who regards
it as an enclosed basin, when we contrast these with the correct
|
Copyright (C) 2003-2019
National Institute of Informatics(国立情報学研究所)
and
The Toyo Bunko(東洋文庫). All Rights Reserved.
本ウェブサイトに掲載するデジタル文化資源の無断転載は固くお断りいたします。