Sulla fonte Z del Milione di Ramusio L’enigma di Quinsai

Abstract

The study of the two chapters of the Devisement dou monde concerning the Chinese city of Quinsai, former capital of the Song Empire and a kind of Far Eastern Venice, is crucial to understand some important dynamics of the tradition of Marco Polo’s book. Indeed the synoptic reading of these chapters in the redactions F, Z and R – the last two far richer of information than the first – seems to confirm an old, debated hypothesis: the one according to which the Latin redaction Z and Ramusio’s Italian version (mostly deriving from a lost Z manuscript) would show traces of a rewriting of some parts of the book, in which some notes by Marco Polo, not used in the Franco-Italian text drafted in Genoa in 1298, would have been included.