Michael Dirda
PHANTASMAGORIA Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media Into the Twenty-First Century By Marina Warner Oxford Univ. 469 pp. $29.95 Kenneth Burke's Attitudes Toward History was once described by the poet Howard Nemerov as "two mouse-gray volumes containing all knowledge." Such a feeling of readerly awe might be similarly ascribed to Marina Warner's encyclopedic studies of the human imagination. Over the past 30 years, this brilliant English scholar has explored the cult of the Virgin Mary, the meaning of fairy tales ( From the Beast to the Blonde), metamorphosis in all its guises, our need for horror and the dark side ( No Go the Bogeyman), and now, in Phantasmagoria, humankind's ongoing attempts to fathom the relationship between the corporeal and the spiritual. In other words, Warner's new book addresses the mysteries of the soul -- and of soullessness. ...-
