MW at BBC Radio 4 with Adjoa Andoh, Anthony Calf and Eloise Secker recording From Fact to Fiction, June 2010
In Progress
MW is currently working on a novel inspired by her father’s bookshop in Egypt in the Fifties - work in progress entitled ‘Inventory of a Life Mislaid’. She is also working on ‘Stranger Magic: Charmed States in the Wake of the Arabian Nights’. For related events please see the Diary here.
Recent Writings, Events, Talks
JULY 2010
MW has been elected President of the British Comparative Literature Association (BCLA) 2010-2013.
July 5th-8th, British Comparative Literature Association ‘Archive’ Conference.
July 17th at 3pm, ‘The Return of the Fairytale - In She-Wolf’s Clothing’ - Marina Warner explores Fairytales’ Marina Warner will explore the surprising character of fairytale - and its protagonists - after Angela Carter at The Frome Festival, Somerset.
JUNE
June 24th, Royal Institute of British Architects Council Dinner talk at RIBA, London. A copy of the speech is available to read here.
June 19th at 7.00pm BBC Radio 4 From Fact to Fiction: short story ‘Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant’ - They Make a Desert and Call It Peace´ - written by MW for BBC Radio 4’s programme ‘From Fact to Fiction’ will be broadcast on Saturday June 19 at 7.00pm and again Sunday June 20 at 5.40 pm.
June 16th-18th, ‘Empire and Me: Personal Explorations of Imperialism in Reality and Imagination’ A conference at Cumberland Lodge, Windsor.
June 11th-12th - ‘Staging the East: Oriental Masking in the British Theatre 1660-1830’, Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds, British Academy sponsored conference, convened by MW and Elizabeth Kuti.
MAY
May 2010, ‘A Source of Inspiration… As Seen by Marina Warner’ essay for The Fitzwilliam Museum, ongoing online exhibition.
May 2010, ‘Chronicle of a Life Repiared’ An essay for the exhibition catalogue ‘Bobby Baker Diary Drawings: Mental Illness and Me’ published by Profile Books, May 2010. Pages 2-17.
May 2010, ‘La Cella di Brigit’ edited by Daniela Corona, introduction and translation by Valentina Castagna, (Quattrosoli, Palermo, 2010). Italian version of the short story ‘Birgitta’s Cell’ first broadcast on 14th January 2007 on BBC Radio 4. Also reprinted with Afterword in Salt On Line, ed. John Kinsella, Issue 3, Summer 2010 here.
27 May 2010, ‘A View of a View’ and essay review on ‘Melchior Lorck’ edited by Erik Fischer, Ernst Jonas Bencard and Mikael Bøgh Rasmussen published in London Review of Books Vol. 32 No. 10 27 May 2010
Pp 15-17.
May 20th ‘Looking East: The Orientalism of Melchior Lorck’, Birkbeck Graduate Seminar, MW lecture at Birkbeck College, 7.30pm.
May 17th at 6:30pm, ‘Oriental Masquerade: Fiction and Fantasy in the Wake of The Arabian Nights’, Edward Said Lecture at The British Museum. Marina Warner, University of Essex, gives the first annual Edward W Said London lecture, with opening remarks by Stuart Hall and an introduction by Jacqueline Rose.
In l999, Edward Said founded, with Daniel Barenboim, The West-East Divan Orchestra, bringing young musicians from the Arab world and Israel to play together. The orchestra is named after a cycle of poems by the German Romantic poet Goethe, who was inspired to a late burst of remarkable creativity by his encounter with eastern literature, first with the drinking songs and love lyrics of the medieval Persian poet Hafiz, and soon afterwards with the Arabian Nights in the first full German translation. In Mozart’s opera, Cosi Fan Tutte, the subject of an essay in Edward Said’s last book, /On Late Style/, the lovers masquerade as orientals (‘Albanians’) to test their fiancées. For Mozart and Goethe, truth-telling and Arabian fantasy were in some way intertwined. How this could be, the forms the device took, and the effects it had, will be explored by Marina Warner in the light of Edward Said’s evolving ideas on ‘the Orient-as-cause’, entangled cultures, contrapuntal reading, and belatedness.
May 13th at 5pm, ‘War & Pity’ Wolfson Lecture Series, Wolfson College, Oxford
The matter of Troy offers a lens to look at war in our time: The Trojan Women and Hecuba have been re-visioned in different translations and productions with a strong contemporary emphasis on Euripides’ uses of pity and terror, the principles of Aristoteleian catharsis. Marina Warner will explore the changing character of the cathartic principle in the post-photographic era of global technologies. Do such scenes and images still inspire a purifying pity?
May 2010 “Siren Voices’ an extract from ‘From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairytales and their Tellers’ in programme for Rusalka by Antonín Dvořák (1901) at Opera North, Leeds. Pp 6-9.
May 2010, ‘Imaginig the Orient’ an essay for the John Johnson Collection, An Archive of Printed Ephemera’ online section ‘A Writer Responds’.
‘From the Archives of the Marciana: Ms Miniscule 1588:15.08’ in the artists book ‘Helen Douglas: Venetian Brocade’ to be published by We Productions, 2010
1st May 2010, ‘An Afternoon with Derek Walcott’ - Professor of Poetry, University of Essex, Lakeside Theatre, public reading at 3pm.
Derek Walcott: In conversation with Professor Marina Warner and Maria Cristina Fumagalli of the Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies, discussing his life and work. Including readings from his works.
