Stranger Magic

by Warner, Marina

• ISBN13: 9780674055308
• ISBN10: 0674055306
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-03-01
• Publisher: Belknap Pr

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.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. xi
Acknowledgements	p. xvii
Introduction	p. 1
Solomon the Wise King
The Fisherman and the Genie	p. 33
Master of Jinn	p. 36
The City of Brass	p. 54
Riding the Wind: The Flying Carpet I	p. 59
Prince Ahmed and Fairy Peri Banou	p. 71
A Tapestry of Great Price: The Flying Carpet II	p. 74
Dark Arts; Strange Gods
The Prince of the Black Islands	p. 87
The Worst Witch	p. 91
Egyptian Attitudes	p. 97
Hasan of Basra	p. 117
Magians and Dervishes	p. 126
A Fortune Regained	p. 141
Dream Knowledge	p. 143
Active Goods
'Everything You Desire to Know about the East…	p. 163
The Greek King and Doctor Douban	p. 191
The Thing-World of the Arabian Nights	p. 195
Abu Mohammed the Lazy	p. 210
The Word of the Talisman	p. 215
Marouf the Cobbler	p. 234
The Voice of the Toy	p. 240
Money Talks	p. 252
Oriental Masquerades
Magnificent Moustaches: Hamilton's Fooling, Voltaire's Impersonations	p. 265
Rosebud and Uns al-Wujud the Darling Boy	p. 282
The Jinniya and the Egyptian Prince	p. 284
'Symbols of Wonder': William Beckford's Arabesque	p. 289
Oriental Masquerade: Goethe's West-Eastern Divan	p. 309
Flights of Reason
Camar al-Zaman and Princess Badoura	p. 325
Thought Experiments: Flight before Flight	p. 330
Why Aladdin?	p. 357
Machine Dreams	p. 371
The Ebony Horse	p. 387
The Shadows of Lotte Reiniger	p. 390
Aladdin of the Beautiful Moles	p. 403
The Couch: A Case History	p. 405
Prince Ardashir and Hayat al-Nufus	p. 425
Conclusion: 'All the story of the night told over…	p. 429
Glossary	p. 437
Abbreviations	p. 439
The Stories	p. 441
Notes	p. 445
Bibliography	p. 499
Index	p. 517
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