Ecstatic Transformation: On the Uses of Alterity in the Middle Ages

by Michael Uebel

This book studies the way in which medieval ways of knowing the Oriental 'other' were constructed around the idea of a utopic East as located in the legend and Letter of Prester John (c. 1160). The birth of utopic thinking, it argues, is tied to an understanding of alterity having as much to do with the ways the medieval West understood itself as the manner in which the foreign was mapped. Drawing upon the insights of cultural studies, film studies,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1403965242
• ISBN13: 9781403965240
• Release Date: October 2005
• Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
• Length: 227 Pages
• Weight: 0.73 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 8.6"