Marco Polo in trans-regional perspective

The recent interest in expanding the purview of Medieval Studies (of which this special issue of postmedieval is a laudable example) is inspiring and bodes well for the future of the discipline. But how are medievalists trained in the history and culture of western Europe to go about it? Collaborations with scholars of other parts of the medieval world, while desirable and exciting, are difficult to sustain individually and institutionally. This essay retraces some of the ways in which I have taken Marco Polo’s Devisement du monde (Description of the World) as a matrix through which to ‘world’ our understanding of the half-century between 1250 and 1300. It combines meta-reflections on terminology with practical suggestions on how to expand one’s familiarity with different histories and cultures; along the way, it introduces some exciting recent secondary works worthy of becoming standard readings for an expansive view of the Global Middle Ages.