On the traces of realia in the ENHG Marco Polo

Marco Polo’s work was translated into many languages in the Middle Ages, and two different redactions are attested in Germany in the 15th century. In this paper, the medieval German version DI will be taken into consideration, namely a translation based on the Tuscan version TB of the Devisement dou Monde, which has survived in five witnesses all dating back to the 15th century. The focus of this study will be in particular on the role of realia in support of a stemmatic hypothesis regarding the witnesses of the branch in question. A theoretical and methodological framework will also be provided, pointing to the semantic and formal traits of realia that make them suitable for applicative studies in the fields of philology and history. After presenting the data and drawing some preliminary conclusions, the advantages that can derive from the TEI encoding of realia in the context of a digital scholarly edition of the DI version of Marco Polo’s travel account will be addressed.