Darkness: A Cultural History

(Hardback)

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Description

Darkness divides opinion. Some are frightened of the dark, or at least prefer to avoid it, and there are many who dislike what it appears to stand for. Others are drawn to its strange domain, delighting in its uncertainties, lured by all the associations of folklore and legend, by the call of the mysterious and of the unknown. The history of attitudes to what we cannot quite make out, in all its physical and metaphorical manifestations, challenges the notion that the world is possible to fully comprehend.

Nina Edwards explores darkness as both physical feature and cultural image, through themes of sight, blindness, consciousness, dreams, fear of the dark, night blindness, and the in-between states of dusk or fog, twilight and dawn, the point or period of obscuration and clarification. Taking readers through different historical periods, she interrogates humanity's various attempts to harness and suppress the dark, from our early use of fire to the later discovery of electricity. She reveals how the idea of darkness pervades art, literature, religion and every aspect of our everyday language.

Darkness: A Cultural History shows us how darkness has fed our imagination. Whether a shifting concept or real physical presence, it always conveys complex meaning.

Reviews

"As subjects go, darkness would seem a little slippery, but in Darkness: A Cultural History, English historian Edwards, a specialist in poetic analyses of the commonplace (the significance of buttons, the history of offal, and so on), grasps it with a sure and practiced mind, sifting through perceptions for an array of definitions that boil down to one idea: possibility. . . . To Edwards, darkness is a thing of richness, universally accessible and transformative, and her passion for the intimacy it allows--a passion buoyed by fluent prose and deep research--expands our understanding, not only of her subject but of its role in our hearts and history."-- "Australian"
"It is apt that such a mesmerizing image should accompany the opening chapter of Edwards's beguiling book, which gallantly aims to subvert common views of darkness, both physical and metaphorical. . . . For the most part, Edwards's approach is considered and engaging as she explores the curious paradoxes and possibilities of ethereal half-shadows and 'umbral blackness.' . . . Marking Edwards's latest work to embrace the neglected and the obscure (previous offerings include weeds, buttons, and Offal: A Global History), Darkness leaves the reader floating, too--but full of conviction that truth and beauty can still exist, to quote Edward Lear, 'when awful darkness and silence reign.'"-- "Spectator"
"The power of encountering life through a dark or dimly lit lens is very much on trend and Edwards's Darkness: A Cultural History fits right in, offering a broad, sweeping narrative which ventures into the worlds of history, anthropology, and science. . . . It is a beautifully produced work, in hardback, with color plates and illustrations that reflect the importance given by the author to darkness in art and poetry. It is the sort of book that makes you want to hold it, caress the cover, and turn the pages gently."-- "Methodist Recorder"
"This is a book the reader can feast on, packed as it is with riches from literature, art and folklore--the fruit, one imagines, of a superhuman research effort. . . . She deals with a huge accumulation of material exultantly. . . . I will not soon forget Edward's introduction to Leonardo's Caricature of a Man with Bushy Hair. . . . (There is an accompanying illustration, one of many that enliven and enrich the text.) She plucks out an especially gruesome image from Baudelaire's poem Une Charogne ('A Carcass') which is impossible to forget, but which I will leave readers to discover for themselves."-- "Catholic Herald"

Author Bio

Nina Edwards is a freelance writer and the author of On the Button: The Significance of an Ordinary Item (2011), Weeds (Reaktion, 2015), Offal: A Global History (Reaktion, 2013) and Dressed for War: Uniform, Civilian Clothing and Trappings, 1914-1918 (2014). She lives in London.