“I do think that this represents a kind of shift towards myth, a recovery of myth, largely through the popularity of writers like Philip Pullman. Somehow myths have returned as a serious subject. It used to be scorned...really scorned. It was part of a nursery tradition, and it was also rather tainted - but not in an immovable way - by the association with right-wing ideologies after the World Wars.” ThinkingWorldWayKindWarUsedSubjectsSeriousTraditionWingsMythRecoveryUsed To BeIdeologyWar Of The WorldsAssociationPopularityRight WingNurseryPhilipTaintedScornedSerious Subjects Author:Marina Warner
“Though it's marvelously entertaining, and I had fantastic fun writing the book, it's not terribly easily, the material, and it's not all that familiar...although we think it is familiar. The processes of the wonderful narratives are very intricate. It's about the charm - the spellbinding charm - of ingenuity, and it's not so easy to remember the plots or the structure or even the names.” ThinkingWritingBookRememberNamesFunEasyProcessWonderfulMaterialsStructureFamiliarFantasticNarrativeCharmPlotEntertainingIngenuityIntricate Author:Marina Warner
“I do not think commodities are taken for granted. One of the convergences in time I noticed, and to me seemed very important, was the emergence of paper money. There had been permissionary notes, exchanging money by writing it, but there was no duplicated form of guaranteeing an exchange.” ThinkingWritingImportantFormTakenPaperNotesGrantedCommodityEmergenceTaken For GrantedExchangingConvergencePaper Money Author:Marina Warner
“I think that a true economics thinker or a Marxist thinker would make nonsense of my argument, although I have given massive seminars and no one has demolished it so far. I did think that this idea from an artisanal and trading perception of the auratic quality of goods when they are given character and inscription, made the stories of phantasmic wealth read more powerfully in the 18th and 19th centuries than the stories of Cinderella's wealth, because they are conjured out of nothing by these magic means.” ThinkingMeanMadeIdeasCharacterStoriesGivenWealthQualityMagicCenturyPerceptionEconomicsArgumentNonsenseMassiveGoodsThinkerTrading19th CenturyMarxistInscriptionsSeminars Author:Marina Warner
“The other thing about the Nights is that it is quite racist. One parentheses is that I think this is one of the negative things that appeal to people, that The Arabian Nights could be used as a disguise for racism. It suited the West. You could smuggle racism into children's literature, you see. The African magician in the story of Aladdin, he's labeled explicitly as the "African Magician." He's not a character but a stereotype, and a lot of this got into nursery literature in this Oriental disguise.” PeopleThinkingChildrenCharacterStoriesUsedNightLiteratureRacismNegativeWestAppealsRacistDisguiseStereotypeMagicianNurseryChildren's LiteratureArabianParenthesesArabian Nights Author:Marina Warner
“I don't think that there's a target audience at all. These stories were in circulation. The stories were told by men, told in the marketplace by men, but also behind doors by women, but there's no real record of this. It's likely they were told by women to children in their interior rooms. The story could be a negative story, they could be presented as a, "Watch out! Women will get round you, do things to you, weave you in their toils." It could be buried in it an old cautionary story about women and their wiles.” ThinkingMenChildrenRealStoriesRoomsBehindsWatchesAudienceRecordsDoorsNegativeRoundsTargetBuriedToilInteriorsMarketplaceCirculationTarget Audience Author:Marina Warner
“There's a whole slew of wonderful speculation of flying in a fanciful way. Gulliver is one of the central examples; Swift has the hum of Arabian Nights in his ear with Gulliver's Travels. The difference is in scale - Gulliver as a kind of Sinbad kind of figure, the way he is picked up and carried. Just to finish up with Scheherazade, I do think that The Arabian Nights could be considered as a great book on women's position in the world.” ThinkingWorldWayKindBookWholeNightDifferencesWonderfulFiguresExamplePositionEarsFlyingScalesSpeculationGreat BookArabianGulliverArabian NightsGulliver's Travels Author:Marina Warner
“The store of fairy tales, that blue chamber where stories lie waiting to be rediscovered, holds out the promise of just those creative enchantments, not only for its own characters caught in its own plotlines; it offers magical metamorphoses to the one who opens the door, who passes on what was found there, and to those who hear what the storyteller brings. The faculty of wonder, like curiosity can make things happen; it is time for wishful thinking to have its due.” ThinkingCharacterStoriesHappensLyingFoundWaitingWonderCreativeDoorsPromiseOffersBlueCuriosityCaughtDuesStoresThings HappenTalesFairyFacultyFairy TaleStorytellerChamberWishful ThinkingEnchantmentMetamorphosisMake Things Happen Author:Marina Warner
