The oldest textual tradition of Marco Polo's account of his travels in Asia between 1271 and 1295 survives in nineteen Old French manuscripts or fragments copied between the early fourteenth and the early sixteenth centuries. Twelve copies—eighty percent of those whose original contents are known – are compilations, and across these twelve manuscripts a total of twenty other texts accompanies Polo's account. Striking for their variety, these cotexts encompass numerous genres (a crusade chronicle, a roman d'antiquité, first-person travel accounts), historical periods (biblical and Greco-Roman antiquity, the 1320s) and personages (Alexander the Great, Franciscan monks, Prester John). Equally noteworthy are the extensive illustrational programs of Polo's account and its co-texts. Out of the surviving nineteen manuscripts eight possess miniatures, among which are three of the most sumptuously illuminated manuscripts of the entire Middle Ages.

These manuscripts are significant because they allow us to see Marco Po - lo's account as his earliest readers saw it. They suggest that Polo's account was not an authoritative and transparent text for these early readers, but rather was strange and problematic. Although copies were owned by some of the most powerful figures in medieval Europe, including Kings Philippe VI and Charles V of France, the addition of other works on Asia and of images to the Polo text indicates that it incited comparison and visualization to aid its interpretation. The reasons for this supplementary material are clear when one compares Polo's account to other medieval texts on the East. Unlike previous writers of antiquity and the Middle Ages who treated the East, Polo largely eschewed the fantastic, described places no other European had seen or mentioned, and spoke glowingly of non-Christian peoples, especially the Mongols. Polo's vision of the East was unprecedented for European readers, who therefore sought to compare it to other accounts so as to gauge its veracity and authority.