New Book: Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights by Marina Warner

 

Marina Warner has a new book out this year, Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights, which has already been released in the UK but won't be available in the US until March. But the press is hot on it in the UK, so I wanted to share today. If you are in the UK, you can have joy now and order the book right away. In the US, you can order the book from the UK now or wait until March. I'm waiting to spare my budget, of course, but I must admit I prefer the UK cover (the one on the left). What about you?

Book description (UK edition):

From the Inside Flap

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 book's 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.

About the Author

Marina Warner spent her early years in Cairo, and was educated at a convent in Berkshire, and then 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 bestselling 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.

And from Stranger Magic by Marina Warner: review: Sameer Rahim revels in 1,001 tales that last a lifetime, reading Marina Warner's Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights, the first few paragraphs to whet your interest:

The earliest translations of The Arabian Nights appeared around the same time as the Enlightenment philosopher David Hume began debunking Biblical miracles from the “ignorant and barbarous nations” of the East. As the West became more rationalist, Nights-fever caught on among countless artists for whom the tales were an outlet for all sorts of fantasies, both magical and sexual.

Mozart was given a copy by his Italian landlady and picked up themes for his oriental opera The Abduction from the Seraglio; Coleridge read the tales with a “strange mixture of obscure dread and intense desire”, the same feelings he evokes in “Kubla Khan”; and Dickens’s homage to the Nights can be found in A Christmas Carol, when Scrooge tries to trap the Ghost of Christmas Past with a candle extinguisher, like the Fisherman coaxing the Genie back into his magic lamp.

Marina Warner’s Stranger Magic ranges widely, and somewhat wildly, from the earliest Western interpretations to Hollywood films such as The Thief of Baghdad. She takes 15 of her favourite tales and spins 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.

Video Tribute to Kay Nielsen by joshje777

Here is our Sunday morning video of a Tribute to Kay Nielsen, courtesy of joshje777. Enjoy! Check back next Sunday for the next in the series.

Library Essentials Month: The Arabian Nights: An Encyclopedia

My knowledge of The Arabian Nights is greater than the average person walking down the street, but not by too much. It has not been my focus of study and I have usually only explored further when I needed to know more about how a tale connected to one of the many European fairy tales I have studied or to read about Scheherazade, one of the most interesting women in folklore. So when I need help, I have a few carefully selected books on my shelf to reference, especially The Arabian Nights: An Encyclopedia (Two Volume Set) by Ulrich Marzolph and Richard van Leeuwen.

For example, when I was working on Sleeping Beauties: Sleeping Beauty and Snow White Tales From Around the World, I spent way too long trying to figure out the source for The Ninth Captain's Tale which is sometimes referenced as a Sleeping Beauty tale. With the help of the encyclopedia and some other detective work, I finally found an answer. I wrote about it last year. I was very happy and the encyclopedia guided me to the answers I had sought.

About the book from the publisher:

The most comprehensive treatment of the Arabian Nights ever published, with more than 800 detailed encyclopedic entries and a wealth of authoritative essays and resources.

An ancient source of wisdom and perhaps the most pervasive Islamic influence on Western culture, the tales of the Arabian Nights have inspired the imagination of young and old. From fantastic characters to love and magic powers, these tales have stimulated creative works of Western literature, art, architecture, music, and popular culture for many centuries.

The tales of the Arabian Nights have long been the focus of scholarly research and critique, but no English language work has ever attempted an all-embracing treatment of them. The fruit of years of research, The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia is the first comprehensive reference work introducing both the Arabian Nights and the context of their genesis and aftermath in Near Eastern, European, and world culture.

Editors Ulrich Marzolph, one of the world's foremost scholars of Near Eastern narrative culture, and Richard van Leeuwen, a prominent scholar of the Arabian Nights, present detailed, authoritative, and up-to-date research on virtually all aspects of the tales, including major protagonists, themes, important translations, textual history, adaptations, reworkings, works inspired by the Arabian Nights, and aspects of literary theory, and provide extensive bibliographies for each tale. In addition to the 800+ encyclopedic entries and numerous essays, the work introduces research that has not previously been published, making it an invaluable resource to scholars, educators, students, and the general public, as well as an essential addition to the core collection of academic and public libraries.

Features
• Includes 800+ encyclopedic entries covering all aspects of the Arabian Nights
• Begins with a fascinating introduction and a variety of essays by renowned scholars, presenting areas of pivotal interest and concern
• Includes a concordance of tales in different editions and translations
• Provides an extensive bibliography, featuring reference works published in English and other languages

Highlights
• The most comprehensive reference work on the subject
• Combines detailed information with impeccable research drawn from primary sources and previous work
• Written by leading scholars of the Arabian Nights
• Provides up-to-date, accessible information on virtually all aspects of the tales

It also provides an appendix with an AT System guide to the tales. Very helpful. It is now out of print, but still available used. Some universities also have online access to it through their databases since ABC-CLIO provides subscription services like that. I don't have easy access to those, so a paper version was my best choice. I don't use it all the time, but when I do, it saves me a lot of time and either answers my questions or sends me off in the right direction for my answer.

Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp, in Rhyme (Calla Editions)

Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp, in Rhyme (Calla Editions) is another new release in Dover's Calla Editions line. This one is by Arthur Ransome and illustrated by Thomas Mackenzie. I'm not as familiar with this book but I have been charmed with what I have seen. Arthur Ransome was a literary rock star in his day. Mackenzie is not as well known as his contemporaries. His work for this book is beautiful and comparable to Edmund Dulac and Kay Nielsen.

Book description:

From the elegant typography and silhouetted endpapers to the twelve color plates and the addition of myriad decorative elements — ornamental heads, initials, silhouettes, partial borders, and much more — this hardcover edition is a unique presentation and a design triumph. Ransome's charming verse rendering, combined with Mackenzie's superb achievement, brings the tale of Aladdin to life in a new idiom.

Whatever Gets You through the Night by Andrei Codrescu

 

Whatever Gets You through the Night: A Story of Sheherezade and the Arabian Entertainments by Andrei Codrescu (Kindle edition) is a new book released this month by Princeton University Press.

All I have to share is the publisher's promotional material provided below. So there have been a lot of Arabian Nights materials released this past year. Should I devote a week to Arabian Nights? Anyone here interested in that? I haven't been able to see the BBC documentary since I am stateside but I have other materials to share.

Book description from the publisher:

"I fear each passing night that I will not receive my maintenance dose of suspense, and then I will cease to exist."--Whatever Gets You through the Night

Whatever Gets You through the Night is an irreverent and deeply funny retelling of the Arabian Nights and a wildly inspired exploration of the timeless art of storytelling. Award-winning writer Andrei Codrescu reimagines how Sheherezade saved Baghdad's virgins and her own life through a heroic feat of storytelling--one that kept the Persian king Sharyar hanging in agonizing narrative and erotic suspense for 1001 nights. For Sheherezade, the end of either suspense or curiosity means death, but Codrescu keeps both alive in this entertaining tale of how she learned to hold a king in thrall, setting with her endless invention an unsurpassable example for all storytellers across the ages. Liberated and mischievous, Codrescu's Sheherezade is as charming as she is shrewd--and so is the story Codrescu tells.

From the Inside Flap

"Like a supercomputer concealed inside an exotic, aphrodisiac fruit, Codrescu's retelling of this ancient bawdy wonderwork ends up by surprisingly calculating the future of our race."--Tom Robbins, author of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
"This extraordinary rewriting of the Arabian Nights is a tour de force. Andrei Codrescu writes with verve, eloquence, and a fervent imagination."--Jack Zipes, adapter of the Signet Classics
Arabian Nights

"This is a masterpiece of storytelling that could find its place alongside the fairy-tale works of Angela Carter, Robert Coover, and Salman Rushdie. Andrei Codrescu gives readers a new and highly entertaining experience of Sheherazade and the Arabian Nights."--Donald Haase, editor of Marvels and Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies

"Andrei Codrescu's brilliant retelling of the Arabian Nights is of the same caliber as Borges's Ficciones. A pleasure to read, it has the lightness, strength, and sparkle of a spider's web."--Cristina Bacchilega, author of Postmodern Fairy Tales

Richard E Grant unravels origins of The Arabian Nights

  

In conjunction with the airing of Secrets of The Arabian Nights on BBC Four, BBC News has an article about the Arabian Nights, Richard E Grant unravels origins of The Arabian Nights. It's a great overview article and here's an excerpt of some of the highlights:

The tales have their roots in oral storytelling thousands of years ago including folk tales from India and mystical stories from Persia

They were carried and spread by traders travelling on the great trade routes of the East where they began to take shape

The oral stories were collected and written down in the great cities of Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo

In the 10th Century, an Arab historian recorded the tales and called them A Thousand Nights

The earliest manuscript of the tales is in Arabic and was written in Syria in the 14th Century

French traveller and scholar Antoine Galland translated it from Arabic in to French in the 1600s

He began with Sinbad the Sailor, which was an immediate sensation in Parisian high society

After fans stood outside his house and demanded more, he is believed to have written more stories and embellished others, such as Ali Baba and Aladdin

In 1706 an anonymous translation of Galland's book called The Arabian Nights arrived in Britain

Records show the first theatrical performance of Aladdin was held in 1788 in London's Covent Garden

There is also a short 2 minute video preview on the article page but it doesn't have an embedding option, so I can't share it here, but it wasn't blocked for North American viewers.

Secrets of The Arabian Nights on BBC Four

If you are in the UK, Secrets of The Arabian Nights is on BBC Four 21 April 2100 BST. Here's the description:

The Arabian Nights first arrived in the West 300 years ago, and ever since then its stories have entranced generations of children and seduced adults with a vision of an exotic, magical Middle East. Actor and director Richard E Grant wants to know why the book he loved as a child still has such a hold on our imagination.

He travels to Paris to discover how the stories of Sinbad, Ali Baba and Aladdin were first brought to the West by the pioneering Arabist Antoine Galland in the early 18th century. The Nights quickly became an overnight literary sensation and were quickly translated into all the major European languages. Richard then travels to Cairo to explore the medieval Islamic world which first created them.

He quickly finds that some of the stories can still be deeply controversial, because of their sexually-explicit content. Richard meets the Egyptian writer and publisher Gamal al Ghitani, who received death threats when he published a new edition of the book.

He also finds that the ribald and riotous stories in the Nights represent a very different view of Islam than fundamentalism. Can the Nights still enrich and change the West's distorted image of the Arab world?

Now I only hope this will be available in some format in the U.S. sometime in the near future...

Visions of the Jinn: Illustrators of the Arabian Nights by Robert Irwin

Visions of the Jinn: Illustrators of the Arabian Nights (Studies in the Arcadian Library) by Robert Irwin is officially released today. I have not seen a copy of it but it sounds fascinating for any Arabian Nights enthusiast or illustration in general. I will someone would produce a volume like this on fairy tale illustration!

Book description from the publisher:

In this richly-illustrated book, illustrations of various Western editions of The Arabian Nights from the eighteenth to the twentieth century are presented and analysed. Visions of the Jinn is simultaneously a closely-focused study of a special case in the history of book illustration, an account of the evolution of an important strand of visual fantasy and a presentation of a hitherto neglected area of Orientalism. Some of the artists - Dulac, Dore, Brangwyn - are famous. Many others, such as Coster or Letchford, are almost totally unknown. In the course of the book, the discussion also reveals much about the visual discovery of the Near East in modern times. This volume will make an important contribution both to the history of book illustration and, more generally, to the history of the book. His analyses of the individual illustrators, mainly English but also French and German can be regarded as a contribution to art history.

The Guardian also ran a recent article about the book by Irwin at The Arabian Nights: a thousand and one illustrations. Here's an excerpt:

A lady on a divan telling stories to a turbaned sultan; men with scimitars running down a dark and narrow street; a jinni issuing like a vast dark cloud from a flask; a prince in a pavilion guarded by lions; a veiled lady at the entrance to a shop; a young man on a flying carpet circling over a domed palace; a man clinging to driftwood in a stormy sea . . . These days, thanks to illustrated children's books, comics, films and video games, people are much more likely to have a sense of what the world of The Arabian Nights should look like than to have actual knowledge of the stories themselves. It was not always so. The first edition of The Arabian Nights had no pictures, and even when, in the late 18th century, fully illustrated editions began to be published, their illustrations gave little sense of the exotic medieval Arab environment in which the stories were set. Only from the 19th century onwards did some illustrators try to get Arab buildings and costumes right.

In 1701 the orientalist and antiquarian Antoine Galland published a translation from Arabic into French of "The Voyages of Sindbad". The translation was well received and since Galland had been told that "The Voyages of Sindbad" were part of a much larger collection of stories known as Alf Layla wa Layla, or "The Thousand and One Nights", he located a three or four-volume manuscript of this work and set about translating it. His translation, published in 12 volumes in the years 1704-17 was a raging success. His Les mille et une nuit was not received as a collection of children's stories (nor should it be). On the contrary, it was read and enthused over by courtiers and intellectuals in Versailles and Paris, and Versailles and Paris set the fashions for the rest of Europe. So translations of Galland into English, Italian, Russian and other languages soon followed. Montesquieu, Voltaire, Addison, Johnson and Goethe were among the 18th-century writers whose work was heavily influenced by the Nights. The Nights had a crucial role in shaping the origins and evolution not just of fantasy literature, but also of the realistic novel.

Copyright was not policed in the 18th century and books that were successful were almost invariably reissued in pirate editions. Between 1714 and 1730 a series of pirate editions of Galland's translation were printed in the Hague. Each of the 12 volumes had a frontispiece by David Coster, a Dutch artist. Since Coster had no notion of the medieval Islamic world as something alien and strange, his engravings depicted the characters in the stories in European dress. King Shahriyar looks very comfortable in his western-style four-poster bed as he sits up listening to stories told by Sheherazade. The only concession to the exotic is that he has a loosely tied turban as an item of nightwear. The relatives of Gulanar the Mermaid are welcomed into what looks like a French palace and the genie summoned up by Aladdin is merely a very large man in a tattered robe.

The article is quite lengthy and informative, so do click through to read it all if it interests you.

More Arabian Nights from Robert Irwin:

  

  

Fairytale Reflections (12) John Dickinson at SMoST

Fairytale Reflections (12) John Dickinson was yesterday's weekly post at Seven Miles of Steel Thistles.

Dickinson chose to write about The Arabian Nights for his personal reflections.  I especially enjoyed his thoughts on Scheherazade, my favorite character from the tales. Here's an excerpt to whet your appetite.  As always follow the link to read more about Dickinson's own work as well as the full piece:

And Scheherazade herself. The young woman who, night after night, tells the stories to her husband the Caliph, knowing that if she ever loses his interest she will be executed in the morning like all his other wives before her. In the sweltering darkness she whispers to him, and he listens with his head propped on silken pillows as she ends one tale and begins another, only to fall silent just as her royal murderer is begging for more. Young as she is, she has mastered the art of the cliffhanger.

(I never asked myself, when I had that yellow book in my hands, what else she might have known about amusing men in bed. Nor did I wonder if the Caliph’s problem with women might have stemmed from some very private little problem of his own, and the reason the stories worked for him was because nothing else was going to. Sad creature that I am, I can think these things now. )

A thousand stories! I’m a storyteller myself, and used to being asked about my ideas. But where did she get all hers from? Maybe she walked at dawn through in the peacock gardens, her brain dull from fear and lack of sleep, plotting the twists and turns that would keep her alive for one night more. That story about the sailor went well. It must be worth a sequel or two. Is seven pushing it too far? All right, but what’s he going to do on his seven voyages? (Bird flies by with mouse dead in its claws) That’s it! Birds! Big birds, big enough to feed on elephants! That’ll make him sit up. That will get me one more dawn like this. One more…

And covers of some of John Dickinson's books, too.  I keep wanting to use his full name since he is Peter Dickinson's son and I don't want confusion to develop: