Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean, has been a site of exceptionally rich cultural exchange. In the l9th century, Laura Gonzenbach began collecting local fairy tales and translating them into German; her publication influenced the course of the European fantasy. She herself was inspired by the activities of Giuseppe Pitrè, a doctor from Palermo and a pioneer of literary ethnography. Marina Warner will sift their remarkable anthologies and draw out the interactions of Arabic, Arthurian, and romance traditions, with a special focus on tales about the world under the sea, where Morgan Le Fay, King Arthur’s half-sister, conjures illusions of castles in the air over the Straits of Messina.