Sax, Boria – The Bell Bookshop https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk Henley-on-Thames Sat, 27 Jan 2024 17:45:48 +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 Sax, Boria – The Bell Bookshop https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk 32 32 Enchanted Forests https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/enchanted-forests/ Sun, 01 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/?post_type=product&p=35685 Linking literature, philosophy, art, and personal experience, a moving exploration of the wooded landscape’s power.
 
In 1985 Boria Sax inherited an area of forest in New York State, which had been purchased by his Russian, Jewish, and Communist grandparents as a buffer against what they felt was a hostile world. For Sax, in the years following, the woodland came to represent a link with those who currently live and had lived there, including Native Americans, settlers, bears, deer, turtles, and migrating birds. In this personal and eloquent account, Sax explores the meanings and cultural history of forests from prehistory to the present, taking in Gilgamesh, Virgil, Dante, the Gawain poet, medieval alchemists, the Brothers Grimm, Hudson River painters, Latin American folklore, contemporary African novelists, and much more. Combining lyricism with contemporary scholarship, Sax opens new emotional, intellectual, and environmental perspectives on the storied history of the forest.

]]> Imaginary Animals https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/imaginary-animals/ Fri, 14 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/?post_type=product&p=25041 An extraordinary menagerie of fantastical and unreal beasts featuring hundreds of illustrations, from griffins to dog-men, mermaids, dragons, unicorns, and yetis.

Fire-breathing dragons, beautiful mermaids, majestic unicorns, terrifying three-headed dogs-these fantastic creatures have long excited our imagination. Medieval authors placed them in the borders of manuscripts as markers of the boundaries of our understanding. Tales from around the world place these beasts in deserts, deep woods, remote islands, ocean depths, and alternate universes-just out of our reach. And in the sections on the apocalypse in the Bible, they proliferate as the end of time approaches, with horses with heads like lions, dragons, and serpents signaling the destruction of the world.

 
Legends tell us that imaginary animals belong to a primordial time, before everything in the world had names, categories, and conceptual frameworks. In this book, Boria Sax digs into the stories of these fabulous beasts. He shows how, despite their liminal role, imaginary animals like griffins, dog-men, yetis, and more are socially constructed creatures, created through the same complex play of sensuality and imagination as real ones. Tracing the history of imaginary animals from Paleolithic art to their roles in stories such as Harry Potter and even the advent of robotic pets, he reveals that these extraordinary figures help us psychologically-as monsters, they give form to our amorphous fears, while as creatures of wonder, they embody our hopes. Their greatest service, Sax concludes, is to continually challenge our imaginations, directing us beyond the limitations of conventional beliefs and expectations.
 

Featuring over 230 illustrations of a veritable menagerie of fantastical and unreal beasts, Imaginary Animals is a feast for the eyes and the imagination.

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