Stranger Magic : Charmed States and the Arabian Nights / Marina Warner.
Warner, Marina, author.
2012
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Title Stranger Magic : Charmed States and the Arabian Nights / Marina Warner.
Author Warner, Marina, author.
ISBN 9780674065079
DOI https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674065079
Published Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2012]
Copyright ©2012
Language English
Language Note In English.
Description 1 online resource (560 p.) : 25 color illustrations, 55 halftones
Other Standard Identifiers 10.4159/harvard.9780674065079 doi
Summary Our foremost theorist of myth, fairytales, and folktales explores the magical realm of the imagination where carpets fly, objects speak, dreams reveal hidden truths, and genies grant prophetic wishes. Stranger Magic examines the wondrous tales of the Arabian Nights, their profound impact on the West, and the progressive exoticization of magic since the eighteenth century, when the first European translations appeared. The Nights seized European readers' imaginations during the siècle des Lumières, inspiring imitations, spoofs, turqueries, extravaganzas, pantomimes, and mauresque tastes in dress and furniture. Writers from Voltaire to Goethe to Borges, filmmakers from Raoul Walsh on, and countless authors of children's books have adapted its stories. What gives these tales their enduring power to bring pleasure to readers and audiences? Their appeal, Marina Warner suggests, lies in how the stories' magic stimulates the creative activity of the imagination. Their popularity during the Enlightenment was no accident: dreams, projections, and fantasies are essential to making the leap beyond the frontiers of accepted knowledge into new scientific and literary spheres. The magical tradition, so long disavowed by Western rationality, underlies modernity's most characteristic developments, including the charmed states of brand-name luxury goods, paper money, and psychoanalytic dream interpretation. In Warner's hands, the Nights reveal the underappreciated cultural exchanges between East and West, Islam and Christianity, and cast light on the magical underpinnings of contemporary experience, where mythical principles, as distinct from religious belief, enjoy growing acceptance. These tales meet the need for enchantment, in the safe guise of oriental costume.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics text file PDF
Source of Description Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Jun 2020)
In E-BOOK GESAMTPAKET / COMPLETE PACKAGE 2012
E-BOOK PACKAGE ENGLISH LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE 2012
E-BOOK PAKET LINGUISTIK UND LITERATURWISSENSCHAFT 2012
HUP Complete eBook Package 2011-2014
HUP eBook Package 2012
HUP eBook Package Backlist 2000-2015
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Stranger Magic
Frontmatter
A Note on the Text
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I. Solomon the Wise King
Story 1. The Fisherman and the Genie
Chapter one. Master of Jinn
Story 2. The City of Brass
Chapter two. Riding the Wind: The Flying Carpet I
Story 3. Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Peri Banou
Chapter three. A Tapestry of Great Price: The Flying Carpet II
Part II. Dark Arts; Strange Gods
Story 4. The Prince of the Black Islands
Chapter four. The Worst Witch
Chapter five. Egyptian Attitudes
Story 5. Hasan of Basra
Chapter six. Magians and Dervishes
Story 6. A Fortune Regained
Chapter seven. Dream Knowledge
Part III. Active Goods
Chapter eight 'Everything You Desire to Know about the East ...'
Story 7. The Greek King and Doctor Douban
Chapter nine. The Thing-World of the Arabian Nights
Story 8. Abu Mohammed the Lazy
Chapter ten. The Word of the Talisman
Story 9. Marouf the Cobbler
Chapter eleven. The Voice of the Toy
Chapter twelve. Money Talks
Part IV. Oriental Masquerades
Chapter thirteen. Magnificent Moustaches: Hamilton's Fooling, Voltaire's Impersonations
Story 10. Rosebud and Uns al-Wujud the Darling Boy
Chapter fourteen. 'Symbols of Wonder': William Beckford's Arabesque
Chapter fifteen. Oriental Masquerade: Goethe's West-Eastern Divan
Part V. Flights of Reason
Story 12. Camar al-Zaman and Princess Badoura
Chapter sixteen. Thought Experiments: Flight before Flight
Chapter seventeen. Why Aladdin?
Chapter eighteen. Machine Dreams
Story 13. The Ebony Horse
Chapter nineteen. The Shadows of Lotte Reiniger
Story 14. Aladdin of the Beautiful Moles
Chapter twenty. The Couch: A Case History
Story 15. Prince Ardashir and Hayat al-Nufus
Conclusion: 'All the story of the night told over ...'
Glossary
Abbreviations
The Stories
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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