Seeing the Medieval World Through The Book of Marvels

Elizabeth Morrison, Senior Curator of Manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum, will discuss the Getty’s fifteenth-century French manuscript of the Book of the Marvels of the World, which weaves together tales of locales both near and far based on ancient sources, medieval folklore, and the supposed travels of eyewitnesses. Its compelling but often fictitious descriptions and images were intended at once to attract Christian European readers with a sense of the “exotic” and repel them by reinforcing their own sense of civilized superiority, a legacy that extends into the modern world.