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020			_a9780226819754
040			_aICU/DLC _beng _erda _cNVIC _dDLC
100	1		_aMichelle Karnes
245	1	0	_aMedieval Marvels and Fictions in the Latin West and Islamic World
264		1	_aChicago; _aLondon: _bThe University of Chicago Press, _c2022
300			_aix, 248 p.; _c23 cm
504			_aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
505	0		_aIntroduction -- Marvels and the philosophy of imagination : true dreams, prophecy, and possession -- Marvels and the philosophh of imagination : bewitchment, telekinesis, and the moving of mountains -- Philosophers' fables -- Imaginative geography -- Marvelous trials -- Mutatis mirabilibus.
520			_a"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"-- _cProvided by publisher.
650		0	_aMedieval literature _xHistory and criticism
650		0	_aComparative literature _xWestern and Arabic _xHistory and criticism
650		0	_aCuriosities, marvels and wonders in literature _xMedieval literature
650		0	_aPhilosophy of imagination
942			_2ddc _cBK
999			_c16294 _d16294