Trade and Romance by Michael Murrin (review)

Abstract

michael murrin, Trade and Romance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. Pp. x, 327. isbn: 978-0-226-07157-2. $45.Michael Murrin's ambitious longue duree study of the romance genre distinguishes itself through an interest in historical geography. Murrin combines literary criticism with a discussion of the spatial configuration of urban environments and physical conditions of travel routes, and he reveals how realities of travel provided the content out of which Western romance fiction emerged. As this book moves across time and space, it reveals a symbiotic relationship between the lived conditions of travel and acts of literary representation (Marco Polo through Milton).This book offers fascinating details in prose accessible to non-academic readers. Broadly tracing the West's fascination with Central and East Asia, the book adopts an innovative structure. Three sections move chronologically through time, each section taking a different culture as its orientation device: first the Mongols, next the Portuguese, and then the English. Throughout these sections, the study pursues intertwining aims. First, it describes the role of 'Farther Asia' in influencing new modes of 'heroic literature' in Western Europe (1). Second, it traces the ever-increasing interest by 'the mercantile class' in aristocratic romance (1). Third, it shows how geography shaped shifting perceptions of the East in romance literature.Murrin's broad arguments about the romance genre's shift from narrow aristocratic values to an increased accommodation of a mercantile ethos are well established (indeed, Murrin's extensive bibliography suggests many others have made similar arguments), but the scope of geographical settings under discussion sets this study apart from others. Part 1 traces the role of Mongol khanates in establishing connectivity across the Eurasian continent from the mid-thirteenth through latefifteenth centuries. The chapters discuss Marco Polo's travels through the lands of Khubilai Khan; narratives about 'Assassins' or Nizari Isma'ilis in Iran; Marco Polo's legacy in Geoffrey Chaucer's Squire's Tale; and the Italian poet Boiardo's treatment of mercantilism and invention of a 'Renaissance version of heroic romance' (2). Part 2 focuses on Portuguese travels throughout Africa, India, China, and Japan. These chapters discuss texts by Portuguese writers who drew from their own knowledge of Vasco da Gama's first voyage. Part 3 turns to texts by early modern English writers. Chapters address the 'double audience' (aristocratic and mercantile) of Spenser's Faerie Queene; representations of Central Asian environments in Marlowe's Tamburlaine; and Milton's Moscovia, a poem that Murrin examines in the context of the Muscovy Company's endeavors in Siberia. …