Editing Marco Polo (section)

=== Role of Rustichello ===
The British scholar [[Ronald Latham]] has pointed out that ''The Book of Marvels'' was a collaboration written in 1298–1299 between Polo and a professional writer of romances, Rustichello of Pisa.<ref name="Latham pages 7">Latham, Ronald "Introduction" pp. 7–20 from ''The Travels of Marco Polo'', London: Folio Society, 1958 p. 11.</ref> It is believed that Polo related his memoirs orally to [[Rustichello da Pisa]] while both were prisoners of the [[Genova Republic]]. Rustichello wrote ''[[Il Milione|Devisement du Monde]]'' in [[Franco-Italian|Franco-Venetian language]], which was a literary-only language widespread in northern Italy between the subalpine belt and the lower [[Po river|Po]] between the 13th and 15th centuries.<ref name="Nota" /><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.rialfri.eu/en/opere/frammento-del-milione-di-marco-polo|title=Frammento del "Milione" di Marco Polo – RIALFrI|website=www.rialfri.eu}}</ref>

Latham also argued that Rustichello may have glamorised Polo's accounts, and added fantastic and romantic elements that made the book a bestseller.<ref name="Latham pages 7" /> The Italian scholar Luigi Foscolo Benedetto had previously demonstrated that the book was written in the same "leisurely, conversational style" that characterised Rustichello's other works, and that some passages in the book were taken verbatim or with minimal modifications from other writings by Rustichello. For example, the opening introduction in ''The Book of Marvels'' to "emperors and kings, dukes and marquises" was lifted straight out of an [[Matter of Britain|Arthurian romance]] Rustichello had written several years earlier, and the account of the second meeting between Polo and Kublai Khan at the latter's court is almost the same as that of the arrival of [[Tristan]] at the court of [[King Arthur]] at [[Camelot]] in that same book.<ref>Latham, Ronald "Introduction" pp. 7–20 from ''The Travels of Marco Polo'', London: Folio Society, 1958 pp. 11–12.</ref> Latham believed that many elements of the book, such as legends of the Middle East and mentions of exotic marvels, might have been the work of Rustichello, who was giving what medieval European readers expected to find in a travel book.<ref name="ReferenceA">Latham, Ronald "Introduction" pp. 7–20 from ''The Travels of Marco Polo'', London: Folio Society, 1958 p. 12.</ref>