‘Earth, Sea, Sky’ Network SEA symposium at Bodega Bay Marie Lab

Talk title: Medieval Deluge and Drownings: Ovid and the Bestiary

Abstract: Flood and drowning are evocative themes that occur in medieval retellings of Creation in the Ovide moralisé and in the key chapters on the siren and the whale in a highly influential corpus: the medieval bestiary. Reading these allegorical interpretations of the world side-by-side, the flooding of the world at once sets down a teleological purpose for watery spaces even as the notion of drowning introduces an aversion to such spaces.

Drawing on tools from science studies and theology (Bruno Latour; Catherine Keller), I argue that depictions of flood in the medieval retelling of Ovid’s Metamorphoses reinforce the standard Christian divide between nature and culture, and between God and believers. However, the medieval bestiary navigates a less direct course by showing that the face of the deep introduces a key unknown into the story of medieval oceans—eco-phobia. The fear…