Signs & Wonders: Essays on Literature & Culture - Brief Article - Book Review

Contemporary Review, March, 2004

Signs & Wonders: Essays on Literature & Culture. Marina Warner. Chatto & Windus. [pounds sterling]20.00. xii 516 pages. ISBN 0-701-17332-7. The author has established herself as a leading historian of modern culture and thought. She is most famous for her lectures (the Reith in 1994 and the Clarendon in 2001) and her books.

But for over thirty years she has also contributed pieces to various newspapers and magazines and these various items are here gathered for the first time: criticism, profiles, obituaries, tributes, memoirs, reporting (beginning in 1972 with the Vietnam War), introductions, and longer essays on issues and people. They are divided into eight sections: Early Encounters; Words and Symbols; Bodies and Minds; Faiths and Marvels; Shakespearean Transformations; Creole; Fairies, Myths and Magic; and, finally, Reworking the Tale. When seen together like this they should, Miss Warner hopes, show her 'consistent interest in the cross-fertilisation of literature, belief and society, and in the interwoveness of cultural, aesthetic and political values'. (Her writings on the visual arts are to appear in a separate volume.) The collection will allow readers of her books to see the full range of her thought and writing.