Travel denotes the shift after the experience of the unfamiliarity and the encounter with otherness. The thirteenth century was the epoch for Europeans to move from the tradition of antiquity toward a new form of subjectivity as well as new understanding of the world. It is interesting that Polo’s description incorporates the fabulous romances with eyewitness accounts. Since the age Polo lived plays a crucial part transforming European concepts of Others, both types of writings have specific demands as a result of historical and economic changes. In light of this, we can see that The Travels of Marco Polo presents the knowledge of Others and the concept of the world in its distinctively ambivalent narrative style. Also, the ways how Polo tells his stories are deeply influenced by the changing worldview and concepts of Others. The thesis aims to contextualize The Travels of Marco Polo and to re-consider its figuration of others and the worldview in the thirteenth century. Chapter 2 summarizes images of the Orient and the connection between the East and the West before Polo’s lifetime. This chapter makes a detailed textual research about how Travels adapts material and narrative strategies from pre-modern travel accounts. Chapter 3 begins with a brief survey on travel accounts relevant to the relationship between the West and the East under the Mongol’s reign. Then, the discussion elaborates one of the foremost travel narratives right before Marco Polo with an attempt to identify their narrative styles and to develop a historical understanding of travel writing in the thirteenth century. From the tradition of earlier travel accounts, we can discover that the concept of Others was always defined as subordinate to a greater spiritual reality. The sketches of marvelous people reflect medieval theological thoughts about Christian Mappe mundi. In Polo’s text, traditional marvels of the East still serve as models of his description of Others and the world. Meanwhile, it seems that Polo also draws a map of trade through writing, producing the unprecedented discursive space to represent the world he traveled and the Others he encountered. His text announced an important threshold in the Western mode of discourse.

旅行文學多半記錄旅行者與他者之互動或描繪目見耳聞之奇遇。十三世紀是歐洲人注意到旅行文學並開始閱讀旅行文學的關鍵期，《馬可波羅遊記》的流行適足以說明這樣的發展趨勢。旅行文學使中古歐洲開始意識到歐洲以外的世界，並逐漸形塑其歐洲主體。本篇論文將《馬可波羅遊記》視為十三世紀旅行文學的代表，申論此書兼容中古歐洲與早期現代歐洲對「世界」與「他者」截然不同的觀點。本論文分別從史地與經濟層面切入，說明十三世紀歐洲旅行文學中的他者，如何從想像空間中的怪獸轉變為經觀察、考證後的知識，同時也解釋十三世紀的旅行文學如何從基督教世界觀中鬆綁，轉變成為一個為較為世俗的、資本主義的世界觀。本論文第二章簡述十三世紀之前的東西交流史，並探討早期旅行文學中的他者與世界觀，再進一步說明《馬可波羅遊記》如何呈現這種早期的他者與世界觀。第三章討論十三世紀歷史背景，指出穆司林文化與蒙古西征如何衝擊歐洲大陸，激盪出《馬可波羅遊記》中寫實的敘述風格，如何建立歐洲旅行文學中將世界視為地理、將他者視為知識的傳統，並開啟西方現代旅行文學的言說體系。

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