Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media into the Twenty-first Century - Softcover

Warner, Marina

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0199239231 ISBN 13: 9780199239238

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2008

Synopsis

With over thirty illustrations in color and black and white, Phantasmagoria takes readers on an intellectually exhilarating tour of ideas of spirit and soul in the modern world, illuminating key questions of imagination and cognition. Warner tells the unexpected and often disturbing story about shifts in thought about consciousness and the individual person, from the first public waxworks portraits at the end of the eighteenth century to stories of hauntings, possession, and loss of self in modern times. She probes the perceived distinctions between fantasy and deception, and uncovers a host of spirit forms--angels, ghosts, fairies, revenants, and zombies--that are still actively present in contemporary culture.

About this title

About the Author:

Marina Warner is Professor of Literature at the University of Essex, an Honorary Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and a Visiting Professor at St. Andrew's University, Scotland. An acclaimed novelist and mythographer, she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2005.

Review:

UNEDITED UK REVIEW: "Review from previous edition ...often manages splendidly vivid pictorial evocations ... a bold, imaginative and provocative study, with a range few other writers would dare."--Carolyne Larrington, Times Literary Supplement

UNEDITED UK REVIEW: "The general effect is rather like that of reading through a first-class encyclopedia."--Nigel Barley, Times Higher Education Supplement

UNEDITED UK REVIEW: "Frighteningly literate and well-informed"--Roz Kaveney, Time Out

UNEDITED UK REVIEW: "Marina Warner is particularly well-equipped to conduct this investigation"--Steven Connor, The Independent

UNEDITED UK REVIEW: "She is exquisitely alive not just to ideas and arguments, but also to the jag and whiff and tang of things"--Steven Connor, The Independent

UNEDITED UK REVIEW: "Phantasmagoria is a cabinet of familiar wonders: a jetting, generous, humane spree of thought, richly quickened by the life it finds within us and adroad, in our media and machineries of mind."--Steven Connor, The Independent

UNEDITED UK REVIEW: "As always Warner's scholarship, eclecticism and inventiveness dazzle."--Bel Mooney, The Times

UNEDITED UK REVIEW: "It is a book of wonders."--Hilary Mantel,The Guardian

UNEDITED UK REVIEW: "Phantasmagoria is a fascinating history of spirited bodies and haunted machines, but a reminder too of why the metaphors still get under our skin"--Brian Dillon, Daily Telegraph

UNEDITED UK REVIEW: "This book's enquiries are wide-ranging, pertinent and up-to- date. All Marina Warner's material is freshly and enticingly presented."--The Guardian, Hilary Mantel

UNEDITED UK REVIEW: "This book is a powerful statement."--Hilary Mantel,The Guardian

UNEDITED UK REVIEW: "Marina Warner is particularly well-equipped to conduct this investigation."--Stephen Connor, The Independent

UNEDITED UK REVIEW: "A densely layered book"--Mike Dash, Sunday Telegraph

UNEDITED UK REVIEW: "She is exquisitely alive not just to ideas and arguments, but also to the jag and whiff and tang of things."--Stephen Connor, The Independent

UNEDITED UK REVIEW: "Phantasmagoria is a cabinet of familiar wonders: a jetting, generous, humane spree of thought, richly quickened by the life it finds within us and abroad, in our media and machineries of mind."--Stephen Connor, The Independent

"Phantasmagoria is a well-argued, inspiring study...For scholars interested in the fantastic in the arts, Phantasmagoria should be thought-provoking reading because it deals in an original way with questions of how to represent the unseen, imagined, and visionary."--Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0199239231
• ISBN 13: 9780199239238
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 496