Gates-Blake Halls 315
5845 S. Ellis Ave.
Chicago, IL 60637

Tel: (773) 702-7985
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Michael J. Murrin

Raymond W. and Martha Hilpert Gruner Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Religion and Literature in the Divinity School; also in the Departments of Comparative Literature and of English Language and Literature, and the College

M.A., Ph.D. (Yale University)

Michael Murrin’s research interests lie in two areas: the history of criticism, with a specialty in the history of allegorical interpretation, and the study of the genres of romance and epic. His teaching focuses on period courses in the late Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the early modern period. His publications include The Veil of Allegory; The Allegorical Epic; and History and Warfare in Renaissance Epic. Currently, he is working on Romance and Asian Trade in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, a study of the two intertwined themes of the growth of Europe’s middle-class culture and its interests in aristocratic romance, and the simultaneous development of trade across Asia conducted by merchants and initially made possible by the Mongol world system. The book is a study of the imagination and attitudes that affect thinking about Asia to this day. Professor Murrin is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.