Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights
Marina Warner
Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights
Magic, says Marina Warner, is not simply a matter of the occult arts, but a whole way of thinking, of dreaming the impossible. As such it has tremendous force in opening the mind to new realms of achievement: imagination precedes the fact. It used to be associated with wisdom, understanding the powers of nature, and with technical ingenuity that could let men do things they had never dreamed of before. The supreme fiction of this magical thinking is the Arabian Nights, with its flying carpets, hidden treasure and sudden revelations. Translated into French and English in the early days of the Enlightenment, this Arabic collection of folk and fairy tales became a huge success with intellectuals, artists and composers. As part of her exploration into the prophetic enchantments of the Nights, Marina Warner retells some of the most wonderful and lesser-known stories. She explores the figure of the dark magician or magus, from Solomon to the wicked uncle in 'Aladdin'; the complex vitality of the jinn, or genies; animal metamorphoses and flying carpets. Her narrative reveals that magical thinking, as conveyed by these stories, governs many aspects of experience, even now.
4.2 out of 5 based on 6 reviews
|
Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Non-fiction |
| Genre |
Literary Studies & Criticism |
| Format |
Hardback |
| Pages |
560 |
| RRP |
£28.00 |
| Date of Publication |
November 2011 |
| ISBN |
978-0701173319 |
| Publisher |
Chatto & Windus |
| |
Magic, says Marina Warner, is not simply a matter of the occult arts, but a whole way of thinking, of dreaming the impossible. As such it has tremendous force in opening the mind to new realms of achievement: imagination precedes the fact. It used to be associated with wisdom, understanding the powers of nature, and with technical ingenuity that could let men do things they had never dreamed of before. The supreme fiction of this magical thinking is the Arabian Nights, with its flying carpets, hidden treasure and sudden revelations. Translated into French and English in the early days of the Enlightenment, this Arabic collection of folk and fairy tales became a huge success with intellectuals, artists and composers. As part of her exploration into the prophetic enchantments of the Nights, Marina Warner retells some of the most wonderful and lesser-known stories. She explores the figure of the dark magician or magus, from Solomon to the wicked uncle in 'Aladdin'; the complex vitality of the jinn, or genies; animal metamorphoses and flying carpets. Her narrative reveals that magical thinking, as conveyed by these stories, governs many aspects of experience, even now.
Read our roundup for Malcolm C Lyons' 2008 translation of The Arabian Nights
Reviews
The Independent
Daniel Hahn
"Exuberantly clever … Warner cracks open the frame to expose the workings of the component parts. She dismantles and rearticulates them on an exhilarating scale, in a book dense with allusions and wide-ranging new associations."
11/11/2011
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The Independent on Sunday
Victoria Beale
"Excellent … The range and subtlety of references in Stranger Magic is its greatest strength … Warner's book makes reading The Arabian Nights seem as essential to understanding the Western literary canon as the King James Bible, and a lot more fun."
13/11/2011
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The Literary Review
Eric Ormsby
"Wonderful … Whether discussing the lore of magic carpets or the occult properties of talismans, she applies what Borges called 'reasoned imagination' to her investigations. She is particularly good on what she identifies as the 'thingness in the stories', the fateful role that common, often household objects play in human destinies. And she has a splendid chapter on the now-forgotten German film-maker Lotte Reiniger, who created the silent shadow-film The Adventures of Prince Achmed on her Tricktisch, a fabulous cinematic contraption she and her husband designed in 1920s Berlin."
01/12/2011
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The Guardian
Robin Yassin-Kassab
"Stranger Magic is a scholarly work that often reads like a fireside conversation. It's encyclopediac, a book to be savoured in slices, yet (inevitably) it's easy to think of further potential topics — giants, for instance, or dervishes, or magical realism from the Arabs via La Mancha to the Latin American boom. But Warner's conclusion reminds us of her organising principle: the uses of enchantment to open new possibilities of thought and sympathy — the necessity of magic, especially in a self-consciously "rational", secular world."
12/11/2011
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The Sunday Telegraph
Sameer Rahim
"… a knowledgeable but rather haphazard cultural history. Warner does not read Arabic and shows little interest in the linguistic texture of the tales — how, for example, any attempt to imitate the rhymed, repetitive prose leads to monstrosities like Richard Burton’s Victorian version, but how turning it into neat English does not reflect its oral origins. She also makes a point of denying their Arab-ness: The Nights, she writes, “has no known author or named authors, no settled shape or length, no fixed table of contents, no definite birthplace or linguistic origin”. But while the stories are certainly universal, they are also firmly rooted in the medieval Islamic world."
04/01/2012
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The Times Higher Education
Fred Inglis
"The mere business of assembling her enormous multitude commits Warner to her repetitions, and one cannot fairly expostulate at this. Nonetheless, at the umpteenth appearance of the bottle, the jinn, the beautiful damsel, the sumptuous carpet, the desert sands, the conversational pots and pans, the cruel tyrant and the voice from the sky, anyone raised on the usual English-speaking literary diet of a realist aesthetic and a dependable connection between cause and effect has to discover the same reserves of patience as the amazing Professor Warner."
03/11/2011
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