Wipf, Briana Jill
(2024)
Marvels and ‘Aja’ib as Contact Points: Medieval Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Literature on Cultural Contact.
Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
Medieval people were fascinated by marvels, or those things, beings, or phenomena that are primarily natural and yet unexplained. Medievalists studying western Europe have used those things classified as marvels to interrogate medieval views of power, theories of mind, and the natural world. Scholars of the Islamicate world have considered ‘ajā’ib (“marvel” in Arabic) literature through the lens of Islamic belief, philosophical debates, and reception of classical thought. Scholars of both traditions have discussed the ways marvels appear in travel literature and act to demarcate the known from the unknown. This dissertation engages with the existing scholarship on marvels and ‘ajā’ib from the perspective of the Global Middle Ages, considering how movements of people, ideas, and trade goods shaped participating cultures in profound and unexpected ways. Through four case studies, this dissertation, “Marvels and ‘Aja’ib as Contact Points: Medieval Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Literature on Cultural Contact,” argues that the marvel often functions as a figure for cultural contact in medieval writing; and by interpreting the marvel, we can better understand the text’s position regarding who or what is considered foreign. Chapter one traces the intellectual trajectory of medical theories of human generation as they reached England and found expression as a monstrous birth in the climax of the fourteenth-century romance The King of Tars. Chapter two offers a comparative reading of the vita of Christina the Astonishing and an Ashkenazic Jewish exemplum from Sefer ha-ma’asim that present as marvels embodied dead women as commentaries on proper piety. Chapter three studies the way self-described scholar and reformed charlatan al-Jawbarī’s exposé of con artists, Kash al-asrār and Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale employ similar rhetoric to argue against alchemy’s categorization as a marvel. Chapter four traces the adaptations made to the story of the mystical and marvelous City of Brass and its connection to the popular Alexander Romance cycle, as the economy of the Islamicate world incorporated sub-Saharan Africa. Taken together, the chapters of this dissertation offer a taxonomy of the medieval marvel in its role as a vessel holding the attitudes, anxieties, and hope involved in cultural contact.
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Details
| Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
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| Status: |
Unpublished |
| Creators/Authors: |
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| ETD Committee: |
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| Date: |
27 August 2024 |
| Date Type: |
Publication |
| Defense Date: |
15 April 2024 |
| Approval Date: |
27 August 2024 |
| Submission Date: |
6 June 2024 |
| Access Restriction: |
No restriction; Release the ETD for access worldwide immediately. |
| Number of Pages: |
324 |
| Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
| Schools and Programs: |
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > English |
| Degree: |
PhD - Doctor of Philosophy |
| Thesis Type: |
Doctoral Dissertation |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
Middle Ages, medieval, Global Middle Ages, marvels, 'aja'ib literature, |
| Date Deposited: |
27 Aug 2024 14:19 |
| Last Modified: |
27 Aug 2024 14:19 |
| URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/46485 |
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