Superman: The Motion Picture Anthology 1978-2006 by Gene Hackman

Superman: The Motion Picture Anthology 1978-2006 by Gene Hackman

This is the fifth book of a set which started with the author's A Collection of Classic Travel Narratives (2006) followed up by Travel Narratives over Five Centuries in 3 volumes (2007), the latter providing abridgements of most of the thirty five travels which were presented in the first book by extracts only. The present book Mediaeval Travellers in Tartary and Marco Polo contains abridgements from five travellers in the Marco Polo era. They are firstly the Franciscans Pian de Carpine and William of Rubruck who travelled at different times to the Mongol capital over thirty years before Marco Polo is supposed to have been in China. Next is Ibn Battuta who was in the Tartar empire fifty years afterwards, and then the Spaniard Gonzales de Clavijo and the German Johann Schiltberger who were separately there little over a century later. Marco Polo is better known than any of these five but there is considerable doubt as to whether he ever went to China at all. Rusticello of Pisa, the author of the book and a well known romance writer, must take the credit for writing a masterpiece, since it formed Europe's ideas of Asia throughout the 14th and 15th centuries, and without him Marco Polo would be entirely unknown. There is no evidence in Chinese archives of Polo having held the important posts at the Mongol Court claimed in the book, and he made no mention of the Chinese ideographic script. A Persian book on China, appearing within a decade of Rusticello's book, was by a writer who never went to China - Polo used Persian spellings for Chinese place names. Some lengthy extracts from Polo, included here, show no details of a journey but a fabulous story which uses some passages scarcely changed from Rusticello's book on King Arthur's court.

Gene Hackman has always wanted to be a writer. He spent his childhood in Danville, Illinois, at his grandfather's modest newspaper office and on assignments with his uncle, a reporter. Gene began his acting career in the theater after serving in the Marines, and went on to star in films such as Bonnie and Clyde, The French Connection, The Conversation, and Unforgiven. He is a two-time Academy Award(R) winner.

SKU	Unavailable
EAN	0883929189014
Title	Superman: The Motion Picture Anthology 1978-2006
Release date	2011-06-07
Format	NTSC
Region Code	region_free
Running time	685
Studio	SUPERMAN: THE MOTION PICTURE ANTHOLOGY 1978-2006
Condition	Unavailable
Note	Unavailable