The coasts of illusion : A study of travel tales

The book opens with a lively, poet‑styled conversation in 13th‑century Venice, where Marco Polo dazzles his listeners with tales of silk roads, pepper farms, towering beasts and distant courts. Through his vivid recollections, the author shows how travelers of the age mixed genuine observation with the allure of myth, creating a tapestry of wonder that still colors our imagination of the medieval world.

In the following chapters the work turns to a careful analysis of those “coasts of illusion,” tracing how dragons, giant peoples and other fantastical races once populated maps before the rise of modern geography. By comparing old travel narratives with later scientific discoveries, the study reveals the slow disappearance of legendary lands from the cartographer’s pen. Listeners are invited to contemplate the delicate border where fact meets fancy, and to appreciate how early explorers fashioned the world’s first shared stories.