|
Showing 1 - 25 of
49 matches in All Departments
An anthology of compelling essays by Marina Warner, one of our
pre-eminent writers and critics. Art-writing at its most useful
should share the dynamism, fluidity and passions of the objects of
its enquiry, argues Marina Warner. In this new anthology of some of
her most compelling work, she captures the visual experience of the
work of several artists – with a notable focus on the inner lives
of women – through an exploration of the range of stories and
symbols to which they allude. Metamorphosis features vividly in the
imagery, stories and media of the art that Warner has chosen to
write about: in connection with animals in the work of Louise
Bourgeois, for instance; with the Catholicism of Damien Hirst; and
with performance as a medium of memory and resistance in the
installations of Joan Jonas. Rather than drawing on
connoisseurship, the author’s approach grows principally out of
anthropology and mythology. She argues that art and aesthetics
increasingly fulfil a magical social function – a principle that
runs through these writings to give the collection a quality that
is polemical as well as coherent. With an introductory essay and
illustrations throughout, Marina Warner investigates how artists
noted for their treatment of disturbing, uncanny material have
reached beyond the visible, to express interior states. Truly
inspiring, her writing unites the imagination of artist, writer and
reader, creating a reading experience parallel to the intrinsic
pleasure of looking at art.
A luminous memoir of post-war childhood, adventure and loss on the
banks of the Nile. 'Wonderful - a brave, inventive, touching
distillation of memory and imagination' JENNY UGLOW Inventory of a
Life Mislaid follows Marina Warner's beautiful, penniless young
mother Ilia as she leaves southern Italy in 1945 to travel alone to
London. Her husband, an English colonel, is still away in the war
in the East as she begins to learn how to be Mrs Esmond Warner, an
Englishwoman. With diamond rings on her fingers and brogues on her
feet, Ilia steps fearlessly into the world of cricket and riding.
But, without prospect of work in a bleak, war-ravaged England,
Esmond remembers the glorious ease of Cairo during his periods of
leave from the desert campaign. There, they start a bookshop, a
branch of W. H. Smith's. But growing resistance to foreign
interests, especially British, erupts in the 1952 uprising, and the
Cairo Fire burns the city clean. Evocative and imaginative, at once
historical and speculative, this memoir powerfully resurrects the
fraught union and unrequited hopes of Warner's parents. Memory
intertwines richly with myth, the river Lethe feeling as real as
the Nile. Vivid recollections of Cairo swirl with ever-present
dreams of a city where Warner's parents, friends and associates are
still restlessly wandering.
A luminous memoir of post-war childhood, adventure and loss on the
banks of the Nile. ‘Wonderful – a brave, inventive, touching
distillation of memory and imagination’ JENNY UGLOW Inventory of
a Life Mislaid follows Marina Warner’s beautiful, penniless young
mother Ilia as she leaves southern Italy in 1945 to travel alone to
London. Her husband, an English colonel, is still away in the war
in the East as she begins to learn how to be Mrs Esmond Warner, an
Englishwoman. With diamond rings on her fingers and brogues on her
feet, Ilia steps fearlessly into the world of cricket and riding.
But, without prospect of work in a bleak, war-ravaged England,
Esmond remembers the glorious ease of Cairo during his periods of
leave from the desert campaign. There, they start a bookshop, a
branch of W. H. Smith’s. But growing resistance to foreign
interests, especially British, erupts in the 1952 uprising, and the
Cairo Fire burns the city clean. Evocative and imaginative, at once
historical and speculative, this memoir powerfully resurrects the
fraught union and unrequited hopes of Warner’s parents. Memory
intertwines richly with myth, the river Lethe feeling as real as
the Nile. Vivid recollections of Cairo swirl with ever-present
dreams of a city where Warner’s parents, friends and associates
are still restlessly wandering.
Timeless fables of loyalty and betrayal Like Aesop's Fables,
Kalilah and Dimnah is a collection designed not only for moral
instruction, but also for the entertainment of readers. The
stories, which originated in the Sanskrit Panchatantra and
Mahabharata, were adapted, augmented, and translated into Arabic by
the scholar and state official Ibn al-Muqaffa' in the second/eighth
century. The stories are engaging, entertaining, and often funny,
from "The Man Who Found a Treasure But Could Not Keep It," to "The
Raven Who Tried To Learn To Walk Like a Partridge" and "How the
Wolf, the Raven, and the Jackal Destroyed the Camel." Kalilah and
Dimnah is a "mirror for princes," a book meant to inculcate virtues
and discernment in rulers and warn against flattery and deception.
Many of the animals who populate the book represent ministers
counseling kings, friends advising friends, or wives admonishing
husbands. Throughout, Kalilah and Dimnah offers insight into the
moral lessons Ibn al-Muqaffa' wished to impart to rulers-and
readers. An English-only edition.
The much-loved tales from 'The Thousand and One Nights' first
appeared in English translation in the early nineteenth century.
The popularity of these ancient and beguiling tales set against the
backdrop of Baghdad, a city of wealth and peace, stoked the
widespread enthusiasm for and scholarly interest in eastern arts
and culture, which had been a dominant fashion in Europe for almost
a century. Four of the most well-known tales, translated by
Laurence Housman, are reproduced in this collector's edition:
'Sindbad the Sailor', 'Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp', 'The Story
of the Three Calenders' and 'The Sleeper Awakened'. Each is
illustrated with exquisite watercolours by the renowned artist
Edmund Dulac. The sumptuous illustrations reproduced here capture
the beauty and timeless quality of these alluring stories, made at
the zenith of early twentieth-century book illustration.
* Shortlisted for the Palestine Book Awards 2016* Memoirs of an
Early Arab Feminist is the first English translation of the memoirs
of Anbara Salam Khalidi, the iconic Arab feminist. At a time when
the effects of the revolution and counterrevolution of the Arab
Spring loom heavy over Middle Eastern politics, this book brings to
life an earlier period of social turmoil and women's activism
through one remarkable life. Anbara Salam was born in 1897 to a
notable Sunni Muslim family of Beirut. She grew up in 'Greater
Syria', in which unhindered travel and cross-cultural exchange
between Beirut, Jerusalem and Damascus was possible. Her political
activities caused countless scandals, from the series of newspaper
articles calling on women to fight for their rights within the
Ottoman Empire, to removing her veil during a 1927 lecture at the
American University of Beirut. In later life she translated Homer
and Virgil into Arabic and fled from Jerusalem to Beirut following
the establishment of Israel in 1948. She died in Beirut in 1986.
These memoirs have long been acclaimed by Middle East historians as
an essential resource for the social history of Beirut and the
larger Arab world in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The bold, distinctive style of Paula Rego's paintings has acquired
for her not only an ever-increasing critical reputation but also an
unusually large and enthusiastic following. Her be-ribboned
little-girl heroines and fairy-tale characters seem firmly rooted
in childhood, yet the innocence of this art is darkened by the
underlying themes of power, domination and rebellion, sexuality and
gender, that run through her work. Here Rego has turned to the
nursery rhyme as a source for her imagery. It is a genre that
perfectly complements her art; full of double meanings, rhymes are
written from a child's perspective but are open to adult
interpretation. Twenty-six well-known nursery rhymes are
accompanied by a series of etchings which she has executed
spontaneously as a child might, drawing directly on the plate
without preparatory planning. Following the traditions of earlier
artists such as Beatrix Potter, she treats the fantastic
realistically, dressing animals in human costume and using
dream-like dislocations of scale. These are wonderfully comic and
rich illustrations with a hint of the sinister, that turn classic
nursery rhymes into colourful stories about folly and delusion,
cruelty, convention and sex.
Paula Rego is an artist of astonishing power with a unique and
unforgettable aesthetic. Taking its cues from the artist, this
fascinating study invites us to reflect on the complexities of
storytelling on which Rego's work draws, emphasizing both the
stories the pictures tell, and how it is that they are told. Deryn
Rees-Jones sets interpretations of the pictures in the context of
Rego's personal and artistic development across sixty years. We see
how Rego's art intersects with the work of both the literary and
the visual, and come to understand her rich and textured layering
of reference: her use of the Old Masters; fiction, fairy tales and
poems; the folk traditions of Rego's native Portugal; and her wider
engagement with politics, feminism and more. The result is a highly
original work that addresses urgent and topical questions of
gender, subject and object, self and other.
|
The Fourth Pig (Paperback)
Naomi Mitchison; Introduction by Marina Warner
|
R461
R397
Discovery Miles 3 970
Save R64 (14%)
|
Ships in 12 - 17 working days
|
An enchanting collection that introduces the author and activist
Naomi Mitchison to a new generation of readers The Fourth Pig,
originally published in 1936, is a wide-ranging collection of fairy
tales, poems, and ballads that reflect the hopes and forebodings of
their era but also resonate with those of today. From a retelling
of "Hansel and Gretel" to the experimental title story, a dark
departure from "The Three Little Pigs," this book is a testament to
the talents of Naomi Mitchison (1897-1999), who was an
irrepressible phenomenon-a prominent Scottish political activist as
well as a prolific author. Mitchison's work, exemplified by the
tales in this superb new edition, is stamped with her
characteristic sharp wit, magical invention, and vivid political
and social consciousness. Marina Warner, the celebrated scholar of
myths and fairy tales and writer of fiction, provides an insightful
introduction to Mitchison as a remarkable writer and personality.
L'Atalante is the work of French director Jean Vigo. It is a study
of romantic love, told in a style influenced by surrealism, but
still Vigo's own. This text is part of the 'BFI Film Classics'
series. Each volume in the series presents a personal commentary on
the film, together with a brief production history and a detailed
filmography, notes and bibliography.
Scheherazade's Children gathers together leading scholars to
explore the reverberations of the Arabian Nights tales across a
startlingly wide and transnational range of cultural endeavors. The
contributors, drawn from a wide array of disciplines, extend their
inquiries into the book's metamorphoses on stage and screen as well
as in literature--from India to Japan, from Sanskrit mythology to
British pantomime, from Baroque opera to puppet shows. Their highly
original research illuminates little-known manifestations of the
Nights, and provides unexpected contexts for understanding the
book's complex history. Polemical issues are thereby given
unprecedented and enlightening interpretations. Organized under the
rubrics of Translating, Engaging, and Staging, these essays view
the Nights corpus as a uniquely accretive cultural bundle that
absorbs the works upon which it has exerted influence. In this
view, the Arabian Nights is a dynamic, living and breathing
cross-cultural phenomenon that has left its mark on fields as
disparate as the European novel and early Indian cinema. While
scholarly, the writers' approach is also lively and entertaining,
and the book is richly illustrated with unusual materials to
deliver a sparkling and highly original exploration of the Arabian
Nights' radiating influence on world literature, performance, and
culture. Philip F. Kennedy is Associate Professor of Middle Eastern
and Islamic Studies and Comparative Literature at New York
University, and Vice Provost for Public Programming for the NYU Abu
Dhabi Institute. Marina Warner is Professor of Literature, Film,
and Theatre Studies at the University of Essex and Fellow of the
British Academy. Her most recent book, Stranger Magic: Charmed
States and the Arabian Nights, won the 2012 National Book Critics
Circle Award for Criticism.
|
The Time Machine (Paperback, Revised)
H. G. Wells; Edited by Patrick Parrinder; Introduction by Marina Warner; Notes by Steve Mclean
|
R244
R197
Discovery Miles 1 970
Save R47 (19%)
|
Ships in 9 - 15 working days
|
'The father of science fiction' Guardian The Time Machine is the
first and greatest modern portrayal of time-travel. It sees a
Victorian scientist propel himself into the year 802,701 AD, when
he is initially delighted to find that suffering has been replaced
by beauty, contentment and peace. Entranced at first by the Eloi,
an elfin species descended from humans, he soon realizes that they
are simply remnants of a once-great culture - now weak and
childishly afraid of the dark. They have every reason to be afraid:
in deep tunnels beneath their paradise lurks another race - the
sinister Morlocks. Edited by PATRIC K PARRINDER with an
Introduction by MARINA WARNER and notes by STEVEN MCLEAN
Accounts of remarkable women at the world's most powerful court
Consorts of the Caliphs is a seventh/thirteenth-century compilation
of anecdotes about thirty-eight women who were consorts to those in
power, most of them concubines of the early Abbasid caliphs and
wives of latter-day caliphs and sultans. This slim but illuminating
volume is one of the few surviving texts by the prolific Baghdadi
scholar Ibn al-Sa'i, who chronicled the academic and political
elites of his city in the final years of the Abbasid dynasty and
the period following the cataclysmic Mongol invasion of 656/1258.
In this work, Ibn al-Sa'i is keen to forge a connection between the
munificent wives of his time and the storied lovers of the
so-called golden age of Baghdad. Thus, from the earlier period, we
find Harun al-Rashid pining for his brother's beautiful slave,
Ghadir, and the artistry of such musical and literary celebrities
as Arib and Fadl, who bested the male poets and singers of their
day. From times closer to Ibn al-Sa?i's own, we meet women such as
Banafsha, who endowed law colleges, had bridges built, and
provisioned pilgrims bound for Mecca; slave women whose funeral
services were led by caliphs; and noble Saljuq princesses from
Afghanistan. Informed by the author's own sources, his insider
knowledge, and well-known literary materials, these singular
biographical sketches bring the belletristic culture of the Baghdad
court to life, particularly in the personal narratives and poetry
of culture heroines otherwise lost to history. An English-only
edition.
|
Love Stories (Hardcover)
Louise Stewart, Peter Funnell, Simon Callow, Marina Warner, Kate Williams; Edited by …
|
R990
R779
Discovery Miles 7 790
Save R211 (21%)
|
Ships in 5 - 10 working days
|
The National Portrait Gallery's collections hold numerous portraits
of creative partnerships. This book looks at the extensive
collection of the Gallery and explores the role of love and the
people featured both as sitters and artists. Drawing on recent
scholarship, the exhibition will explore changing ideas of love,
and give readers the opportunity to discover love stories both
tragic and transcendent. The stories cover a variety of
topicsincluding: the role of the muse,featuring stories such as
George Romney, Lady Emma Hamilton and Nelson,and the Bloomsbury
group; scandal and tragedy, exploringthe relationshipsof Oscar
Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson,and
John Lennon and Yoko Ono; literary love,highlightingthe talesof
Mary and Percy Shelley,and Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes; a shared
studio, featuring the stories of artists Lee Miller and Man Ray,and
Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson;and love and the lens,which
exploresthe stories of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh,and Mick
and Bianca Jagger. Love Stories will be brought to life through the
perspective of various authors, using material from the sitter's
own letters, diaries and poetry, while highlighting their
connection and influence on some of the greatest masterpieces of
art.
Accounts of remarkable women at the world's most powerful court
Consorts of the Caliphs is a seventh/thirteenth-century compilation
of anecdotes about thirty-eight women who were consorts to those in
power, most of them concubines of the early Abbasid caliphs and
wives of latter-day caliphs and sultans. This slim but illuminating
volume is one of the few surviving texts by the prolific Baghdadi
scholar Ibn al-Sa'i, who chronicled the academic and political
elites of his city in the final years of the Abbasid dynasty and
the period following the cataclysmic Mongol invasion of 656/1258.
In this work, Ibn al-Sa'i is keen to forge a connection between the
munificent wives of his time and the storied lovers of the
so-called golden age of Baghdad. Thus, from the earlier period, we
find Harun al-Rashid pining for his brother's beautiful slave,
Ghadir, and the artistry of such musical and literary celebrities
as Arib and Fadl, who bested the male poets and singers of their
day. From times closer to Ibn al-Sa?i's own, we meet women such as
Banafsha, who endowed law colleges, had bridges built, and
provisioned pilgrims bound for Mecca; slave women whose funeral
services were led by caliphs; and noble Saljuq princesses from
Afghanistan. Informed by the author's own sources, his insider
knowledge, and well-known literary materials, these singular
biographical sketches bring the belletristic culture of the Baghdad
court to life, particularly in the personal narratives and poetry
of culture heroines otherwise lost to history. An English-only
edition.
Long-listed for the 2016 Edge Hill Short Story Prize Fly Away Home
is Marina Warner's third - and eagerly-awaited - collection of
short stories. Inspired by fairy tales, legends, and mythology,
this timeless selection explores the themes of love and war - in
families, and between generations. In `Melusine' a gorgeous mermaid
encounters disaster in love and visits her aunt, Morgan le Fay, to
pour out her woes ; in `Breadcrumbs' a hospital patient overhears a
night nurse recounting an extraordinary tale of family torn apart
under terrifying circumstances. `Out of the Burning House'
introduces an elderly actor recalling an unusual case of heartbreak
at the hands of a TV personality; in `The Difference in the Dose' a
young mother becomes increasingly anxious about the rift between
herself and her adoptive mother. And in `Letter to an Unknown
Soldier' a thirteen year-old girl writes a heartrending second
letter to an older brother away at war, having had no reply to her
first... Like her award-winning novels, Marina Warner's stories
conjure up mysteries and wonders in a physical world, treading a
delicate, magical line between the natural and the supernatural,
between openness and fear. An elegant mix of the poignant, the
caustic, and the bizarre, Fly Away Home will be treasured by fans
and new readers alike.
Art-writing at its most useful should share the dynamism, fluidity
and passions of the objects of its enquiry, argues Marina Warner.
In this new anthology of some of her most compelling work, she
captures the visual experience of the work of several artists -
with a notable focus on the inner lives of women - through an
exploration of the range of stories and symbols to which they
allude. Metamorphosis features vividly in the imagery, stories and
media of the art that Warner has chosen to write about: in
connection with animals in the work of Louise Bourgeois, for
instance; with the Catholicism of Damien Hirst; and with
performance as a medium of memory and resistance in the
installations of Joan Jonas. Rather than drawing on
connoisseurship, the author's approach grows principally out of
anthropology and mythology. She argues that art and aesthetics
increasingly fulfil a magical social function - a principle that
runs through these writings to give the collection a quality that
is polemical as well as coherent. With an introductory essay and
illustrations throughout, Marina Warner investigates how artists
noted for their treatment of disturbing, uncanny material have
reached beyond the visible, to express interior states. Truly
inspiring, her writing unites the imagination of artist, writer and
reader, creating a reading experience parallel to the intrinsic
pleasure of looking at art.
From wicked queens, beautiful princesses, elves, monsters, and
goblins to giants, glass slippers, poisoned apples, magic keys, and
mirrors, the characters and images of fairy tales have cast a spell
over readers and audiences, both adults and children, for
centuries. These fantastic stories have travelled across cultural
borders, and been passed on from generation to generation,
ever-changing, renewed with each re-telling. Few forms of
literature have greater power to enchant us and rekindle our
imagination than a fairy tale. But what is a fairy tale? Where do
they come from and what do they mean? What do they try and
communicate to us about morality, sexuality, and society? The range
of fairy tales stretches across great distances and time; their
history is entangled with folklore and myth, and their inspiration
draws on ideas about nature and the supernatural, imagination and
fantasy, psychoanalysis, and feminism. Marina Warner has loved
fairy tales over a long writing life, and she explores here a
multitude of tales through the ages, their different manifestations
on the page, the stage, and the screen. From the phenomenal rise of
Victorian and Edwardian literature to contemporary children's
stories, Warner unfolds a glittering array of examples, from
classics such as Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and The Sleeping
Beauty, the Grimm Brothers' Hansel and Gretel, and Hans Andersen's
The Little Mermaid, to modern-day realizations including Walt
Disney's Snow White and gothic interpretations such as Pan's
Labyrinth. In ten succinct chapters, Marina Warner digs into a rich
hoard of fairy tales in their brilliant and fantastical variations,
in order to define a genre and evaluate a literary form that keeps
shifting through time and history. Her book makes a persuasive case
for fairy tale as a crucial repository of human understanding and
culture.
Marina Warner has gathered together a magical collection of fairy
tales by the great women storytellers of the 17th and 18th
centuries. These are passionate, extraordinary, and occasionally
proto-feminist retellings of classic fairy stories by women who
ingeniously used the fairy tale genre to comment on their own times
and experiences. The stories are all in superb new translations by
celebrated writers, including A. S. Byatt, Gilbert Adair and John
Ashbery. With a brilliant intorduction by Marina Warner, recognised
as one of our greatest experts on myth and fairy tale.
|
|