14th of “Literature Talks” Sheds Light on Medieval Studies

TOBB ETÜ Department of English Language and Literature continues to organize its “Literature Talks” series online because of the coronavirus pandemic. The fourteenth seminar entitled “A Medieval Traveller’s Guide to Geographically Freakish Others” was delivered on the 28th of January 2022 by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Züleyha Çetiner-Öktem who is known for her studies on Medieval literature.

Guiding us into the inner world of the Medieval people through the Psalter World Map, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Çetiner-Öktem interpreted this early world map representing three continents with respect to Europe’s identity formation based on the self and the other. The seminar, enriched by the contributions of students and academics from different universities, supplied an academic platform for the exchange of ideas about the reasons for the emergence of human-like monsters imagined to reside in “marvelous and monstrous” geographies cited in Medieval texts.