(10) MARINA WARNER –

NO GO THE BOGEYMAN: SCARING, LULLING & MAKING MOCK (1998)

 

Marina Warner – or Dame Marina Warner to give her title as well – is an English mythographer, typically writing about mythology, folklore or fairytales.

Typically her focus is on female figures – literally in her book Monuments & Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form. Indeed, she started with the ultimate female figure of Catholic veneration, the Virgin Mary (well, after a book on the Empress Dowager or Dragon Empress of the Qing Empire, Tz’u-his), which she followed with a book on Joan of Arc.

Perhaps her leading book on female figures of folklore and fairytales was the evocatively titled From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers).

In a sense, this book is the companion to that one and something of an exception to the rule of her usual female lens, focusing as it does on the figures of male terror in folklore, fairytales, and fiction – “ogres and giants, bogeymen and bugaboos” (which sadly omits my personal favorite terms of bugbear and bete noire).

Although of course Dame Warner has been prolific enough I could compile a top ten books just of those written by her. She also gets bonus points being identified as the “lady writer” of the Dire Straits song of that name – as the writer the singer sees on television “talking about the Virgin Mary” and who reminds him of his former lover.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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