The manuscript BNF fr. 1116 (F) is the best surviving witness of the Devisement dou monde both
for the quality of its reading and because it offers the closest version to the original form of the
text. The book was written by Marco Polo, who had travelled for 24 years in Asia in the last
quarter of the thirteenth century, and Rustichello da Pisa, an Arthurian romance writer, while
both were prisoners in Genoa in 1298. The language in which the work was first written – an
Old French heavily sprinkled with morphological as well as lexical Italianisms – is considered
as a representative example of «Franco-Italian». The great heterogeneity of the texts usually
included within this category, however, might provide an incorrect impression as regards both
the original linguistic form of the Devisement and the audience to whom it was originally
addressed. The language of the MS BNF fr. 1116 does not display strong similarities to the
hybrid language used in Northern Italy for chivalric literature, which is traditionally called
«Franco-Italian» or «Franco-Venetan». Some linguistic correspondences enable us to connect
the MS BNF fr. 1116 with the group of Old French manuscripts copied by Pisan scribes while
incarcerated in Genoa prison, following the battle of Meloria (1284). The fragment of the
Devisement recently discovered by C. Concina appears to be very similar to F. Both graphic and
phonetic evidences suggest that this witness, too, has to be localised to Tuscany.
