Hello there. I am looking for examples of texts similar to The Travels of Marco Polo, specifically: texts detailing someone's first-hand accounts of traveling to "far-way" lands, and the fantastic things they experience there. I have a feeling Marco Polo can't be the only one. Any texts supposedly detailing fantastic things or impossibilities would also be helpful. The project I'm working on requires examples of times where people have reported impossibilities as if they were true, to demonstrate their untrustworthiness. Thanks for any help.
I suggest doing some research into the genre of medieval travel literature. In addition to finding parallel texts to Marco Polo's--including some that share a few of his fantastical stories (and at least one that plagiarizes large chunks of his book wholesale)--you'll find a lot of excellent research on how to interpret the fantastical elements/how contemporary readers did.
There is another traveller similar to Marco Polo, but a little bit earlier - William of Rubruck, who was sent as an ambassador from the pope to the Mongol court in China. It doesn't have the same amount of fantastical stuff that Polo's book has, though:
Peter Jackson, The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck: His Journey to the Court of the Great Khan Möngke, 1253-1255 (Routledge, 1990)