«... io essendo giovanetto n’ho udito molte fiate dire...»

Abstract

According to Luigi Foscolo Benedetto’s prolegomena to the critical edition of 1928, the Italian translation of Marco Polo’s book published by Giovanni Battista Ramusio in the Secondo volume delle Navigazioni e viaggi («R») resulted from the collation of five different texts. One of his main sources was very close to the Latin translation preserved by the manuscript in the Archivio y Biblioteca Capitulares de Toledo, Zelada 49-20 («Z»), which displays supplementary contents of undoubted authenticity compared to the rest of the manuscript transmission. Recent research has proved that the Z-redaction progressively increased in size over the course of time. Some pieces of evidence suggest that Ramusio made his translation from a text containing further authentic variants compared to the model of the Zelada codex. The results reported in the present study confirm the hypothesis that the addenda distinguishing Z and R from all remaining witnesses are the product of Marco Polo’s reworking of his book.