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The Meanings of Magic: From the Bible to Buffalo Bill. Ed. Amy Wygant. New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2006. x + 241 pp. £70.00. ISBN 1–84545–178–3, Forum for Modern Language Studies, Volume 43, Issue 4, October 2007, Page 477, https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqm096
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It is often the case that collections of essays which derive from conferences or lecture series fail to capture the energy and connectivity of the original event. It is Amy Wygant's adept introduction which conjures the many facets of this volume that makes the gathering of scholarship in fields normally far apart, such as theology and film studies, seventeenth-century French drama and library studies, so captivating and focused. Magic proves to be everywhere, modern and ancient, the stuff of old and new media. While the inner circle centres on Glasgow, the expanding worlds of beliefs in glamour and the magic arts (including cinema, surrealism and Harry Potter) strongly challenge both rationalist and postmodern concepts of cultural production. This is, therefore, a volume to stimulate the critical imagination across the arts. If there is one disappointment, it is perhaps the token “science and magic” essay about the Glasgow “Magus”, Professor John Ferguson. More interested in alchemy and the quest to collect all its lore than in the magic worked in his chemistry laboratory, here is a truth about magic that all the other essays endorse in so many ways. Quests and deep secrets, mystery and allusion are always more captivating than undecidabilty or fact.
