Marina Warner - Stranger Magic: Charmed States & The Arabian Nights

Contents

Magic 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 became a best-seller among intellectuals, when it was still thought of in the Arab world as a mere collection of folk tales. For thinkers of the West the books strangeness opened visions of transformation: dreams of flight, speaking objects, virtual money, and the power of the word to bring about change. Its tales create a poetic image of the impossible, a parable of secret knowledge and power. Above all they have the fascination of the strange the belief that true knowledge lies elsewhere, in a mysterious realm of wonder.

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. In this respect, the east and west have been in fruitful dialogue. Writers and artists in every medium have found themselves by adopting Oriental disguise. With startling originality and impeccable research, this ground-breaking book shows how magic, in the deepest sense, helped to create the modern world, and how profoundly it is still inscribed in the way we think today.

Marina Warner spent her early years in Cairo, and was educated in Brussels and London, before studying Modern Languages at Oxford. She is an internationally acclaimed cultural historian, critic, novelist and short story-writer. From her early books on the Virgin Mary and Joan of Arc, to her best-selling studies of fairy-tales and folk-stories, From the Beast to the Blonde and No Go the Bogeyman, her work has explored different figures in myth and fairy tale and the art and literature they have inspired. She lectures widely in Europe, the United States and the Middle East, and is currently Professor in the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies, University of Essex. She was appointed CBE in 2008. www.marinawarner.com

Fiction

In a Dark Wood

The Skating Party

The Lost Father

Wonder Tales (Editor)

The Mermaids in the Basement (Stories)

Indigo

The Leto Bundle

Murderers I Have Known (Stories)

Non-Fiction

The Dragon Empress

Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary

Queen Victorias Sketchbook

Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism

Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form

From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairytales and Their Tellers

Managing Monsters: Six Myths of Our Time (The Reith Lectures 1994)

The Inner Eye: Art Beyond the Visible

No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling and Making Mock

Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds (The Clarendon Lectures 2001)

Signs & Wonders: Essays on Literature & Culture

Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media

Arabian Nights: editions and translations

Arabian Nights Entertainments [c.170621], Mack, Robert L. ed., (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) [ANE]

Les mille et une Nuits, Bencheikh, Jamel Eddine and Miquel, Andr, trans. and ed., 3 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 2005) [Bencheikh/Miquel]

Burton, Richard, Arabian Nights, The Marvels and Wonders of the Thousand and One Nights, ed. and trans. Jack Zipes (New York: Signet, 1999)

Burton, Richard, The Arabian Nights: Tales from A Thousand and One Nights, intro. A.S., Byatt (New York: Random House, 2001)

Burton, Richard, T he Arabian Nights, 13 vols. http://www.manybooks.net/authors/burtonri.html (accessed 26 April 2010) [Burton]

Le Cabinet des fes; ou Collection choisie des contes de fes, et autres contes merveilleux, ed. Charles Joseph Mayer, 41 vols (Amsterdam, 178589 and Geneva, 178993)

Chauvin, Victor, Bibliographie des ouvrages arabes ou relatifs aux arabes, Vols. 47 (Lige 190003, repr. London, 2003)

Dixon, E., ed. Fairy Tales from the Arabian Nights, illust. J. D. Batten (London: J.M. Dent, 1893)

[Encyclopaedia] The Arabian Nights Encyclopaedia, Van Leeuwen, Richard, and Marzolph, Ulrich, eds with Hassan Wassouf, 2 vols (Santa Barbara, Denver and Oxford: ABC Clio, 2004) (ANEnc)

Gabrieli, Francesco, trans. and ed., Le Mille e una Notte [1948], intro. Tahar Ben Jelloun, 4 vols (Turin: Einaudi, 2006)

[Galland] Les mille et une Nuit: contes arabes, 3 vols. Antoine Galland, trans., and eds., Sermain, Jean-Paul and Chrabi, Aboubakr (Paris: Flammarion, 2004) [Galland]

Haddawy, Husain, trans., The Arabian Nights, based on the text of the fourteenth-century Syrian manuscript edited by Muhsin Mahdi (New York: Norton, 1990) [Haddawy/Mahdi I]

Haddawy, Husain, trans., The Arabian Nights II: Sindbad and Other Popular Stories (New York: Norton, 1995) [Haddawy/Mahdi II]

Housman, Laurence, Stories from the Arabian Nights, illus. Edmund Dulac (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1907)

Lane, Edward William, trans., The Arabian Nights Entertainments; or, The Thousand and One Nights With six hundred woodcuts by William Harvey, 3 vols. (London: John Murray, 1850) [Lane]

Lang, Andrew, ed., The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Illus H.J. Ford (London:Longmans, 1898)

Lyons, Malcolm C. with Lyons, Ursula, trans., The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights, intro. Robert, Irwin. 3 vols (London: Penguin, 2009) [Lyons]

Mathers, Powys, The Arabian Nights: The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, from the translation of Dr J. C. Mardrus. 6 vols. (London: The Folio Society, 2003) [Mathers/Mardrus]

Scott, Jonathan, Tales, Anecdotes, and Letters translated from the Arabic and Persian (Shrewsbury: T. Cadell, 1800)

Weber, Henry, Tales of the East, 3 vols (Edinburgh: Ballantyne, 1812)