Michelle Karnes

My book will explore premodern literature, philosophy, and religious thought about the seas from the Latin West and the Islamic world, I aim to show that the seas were imagined as an alternative world in which communities could be differently formed and identities based on such categories as species and nationality, even race and religion, could be reconceived. I will focus on the ways in which fantastic legends, marvels, and mythologies concerning the seas inhabited a shared imaginary. It is difficult to locate their origins or track their trajectories with precision because they migrated freely and changed often. They took shape between cultures and belonged to no single one. In the end, The Mirroring Seas will, I hope, reveal a medieval fascination with the permeability of animal and social identity, show how the seas provided a special space for experimental thought about it, and present a method of comparison that suits imaginary beings and narratives. 

Michelle Karnes studies late medieval literature in its philosophical and religious context. Her most recent book, Medieval Marvels and Fictions in the Latin West and Islamic World (University of Chicago, 2022), investigates marvels like the evil eye and enchanted rings in both philosophy and literature, in both the Latin West and Arabic-speaking world. Her first book, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages (University of Chicago Press, 2011), explores the role of imagination in medieval religious meditations and theories of cognition to show how the intellectual force of imagination contributes to its narrative power. She has held year-long fellowships at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Huntington Library in San Marino, and the Institute of Sacred Music at Yale University. Along with Misty Schieberle, she is also editor of Studies in the Age of Chaucer.