https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk Henley-on-Thames Mon, 03 Mar 2025 13:32:58 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/cropped-Bell-Background-Blue-32x32.png https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk 32 32 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/waterless-sea/ Sun, 15 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/waterless-sea/ Mirages have long astonished travelers of the sea and beguiled thirsty desert voyagers. Traditional Chinese and Japanese poetry and art depict the above-horizon, superior mirage, or fata morgana, as exhalations of clam-monsters. Indian sources relate mirages to the “thirst of gazelles,” a metaphor for the futility of desire. Starting in the late eighteenth century, mirages became a symbol in the West of Oriental despotism-a negative, but also enchanted, emblem. But the mirage motif is rarely simply condemnatory. More often, our obsession with mirages conveys a sense of escape, of fascination, of a desire to be deceived. The Waterless Sea is the first book devoted to the theories and history of mirages. Christopher Pinney navigates a sinuous pathway through a mysterious and evanescent terrain, showing how mirages have impacted politics, culture, science, and religion-and how we can continue to learn from their sublimity. ]]>