Medieval Marvels and Fictions in the Latin West and Islamic World - by Michelle Karnes (Hardcover)

About the Book

"It is a commonplace that marvels like enchanted rings and sorcerers' stones were topics of fascination in the Middle Ages, not only in romance and travel literature, but also in the period's philosophic writing: magical objects with hard-to-explain powers abound. This is the first book to analyze these different bodies of writing alongside one another, comparing texts from both the Latin West (including writings in English, French, Italian, and Spanish) and in Arabic on the topic, attempting a unifying theory of marvels across different disciplines and cultures. Michelle Karnes tells an untold story of the parallels between Arabic and Latin thought, reminding us that the strange and the unfamiliar travel unusually well across a range of genres, spanning geographical and conceptual space, and offers an ideal vantage point from which to understand Arabic and Latin intercultural exchange. Employing the notion of the near-impossibility, Karnes traverses this diverse archive, marking the outer boundaries of both nature's capabilities and human creativity. Imagination, she shows, invests marvels with their character and, ultimately, their power. Skirting the distinction between the real and unreal, the true and the false, imagination, for Karnes, endows marvels with indeterminacy and import, imbuing them with inherently interdisciplinary, boundary-resistant, perplexing properties. These near-impossibilities cannot be conclusively discounted; rather, they challenge readers to discover the highest capabilities of both nature and the human intellect. Karnes offers here a rare, comparative perspective and a new methodology to study a topic long recognized to be central to medieval culture"--

Book Synopsis

A cross-cultural study of magical phenomena in the Middle Ages.

Marvels like enchanted rings and sorcerers' stones were topics of fascination in the Middle Ages, not only in romance and travel literature but also in the period's philosophical writing. Rather than constructions of belief accepted only by simple-minded people, Michelle Karnes shows that these spectacular wonders were near impossibilities that demanded scrutiny and investigation.

This is the first book to analyze a diverse set of writings on such wonders, comparing texts from the Latin West--including those written in English, French, Italian, and Castilian Spanish --with those written in Arabic as it works toward a unifying theory of marvels across different disciplines and cultures. Karnes tells a story about the parallels between Arabic and Latin thought, reminding us that experiences of the strange and the unfamiliar travel across a range of genres, spanning geographical and conceptual space and offering an ideal vantage point from which to understand intercultural exchange. Karnes traverses this diverse archive, showing how imagination imbues marvels with their character and power, making them at once enigmatic, creative, and resonant. Skirting the distinction between the real and unreal, these marvels challenge readers to discover the highest capabilities of both nature and the human intellect. Karnes offers a rare comparative perspective and a new methodology to study a topic long recognized as central to medieval culture.

Review Quotes

"Karnes overturns how we often understand and approach the spectacular things and objects that astonish, bewitch, enchant, and engulf our imaginations and demonstrates extraordinary command over a vast range of textual material written in Latin, Arabic, and a number of vernaculars, including Middle English, French, and Castilian. Each chapter introduces theoretically challenging concepts and puts them to work on a topic that is staggeringly cross-disciplinary across natural philosophy, literature, and fiction, touching on, for instance, astronomy, geomancy, theology, and myth. Karnes sets the standard for new intellectual literary histories that are multilingual and interdisciplinary; scholars and students interested in the global turn should take note."-- "Modern Philology"

"A rich survey of marvels that thinks about the relationship between art and nature and between readers and writers across cultures and disciplines."-- "Medium Aevum"

"Any reader opening a book on marvels might reasonably hope to feel wonder and amazement at the treasures inside. Like the medieval authorities whom she analyzes, Karnes's argument manages to not only demystify but to increase interest in marvels."-- "Studies in the Age of Chaucer"

"An adventurous comparative study of Christian and Islamic culture from the seventh to the fourteenth centuries, with forays into later works such as Don Quixote. [Karnes] looks at natural philosophy and optics, cognitive theories, travel literature and wonder tales, seeing in these varied disciplines a common thread of intellectual curiosity."-- "New York Review of Books"

"Few scholars of medieval Europe have sought to put the body of writings on marvels produced in the Latin West in dialogue with currents in Arabic letters. Karnes navigates this terrain with sophistication and erudition. The breadth is stunning, and the comfort and ease that Karnes exhibits throughout a broad swath of intellectual endeavors are truly remarkable. This will be a vital work for students and scholars of intellectual history for years to come. We need more scholarship just like this: willing to take risks, to explore distant terrain, and to open new conversations."--Travis Zadeh, Yale University

"This is an excellent and refreshingly new account of the marvelous in medieval cultures. Karnes approaches marvels as a philosophical problem. Whether natural or invented, a marvel arouses wonder because of its liminal status as a rare, implausible, yet not impossible event or object. A particular strength is that Karnes goes beyond treating Arabic philosophy and literature as 'influences' on the West and works directly with the Arabic sources."--Barbara Newman, Northwestern University

About the Author

Michelle Karnes is professor of English and the history of philosophy and science at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages and is editor of Studies in the Age of Chaucer.