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Valhalla In Norse mythology, Valhalla was the great banqueting hall in Asgard in which heroes who had been slain in battle feasted with Odin eternally.

'Then why didn't you just live there happily ever after?' 'Because there's a snake in every paradise, even if it is Valhalla, or Nirvana, or whatever it was they called it in Persia!

ANDRÉ BRINK Imaginings of Sand, 1996

Xanadu Xanadu is the name of the ancient city in South-east Mongolia where Kublai Khan (1216-94), the Mongol emperor of China, had his residence. Coleridge's poem 'Kubla Khan' (1816) begins with the famous words:

'In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree'.

The name can be applied to a place of dreamlike magnificence, beauty, and luxury.

Levy's Lodge—that was what the sign at the coast road said—was a Xanadu of the senses; within its insulated walls there was something that could gratify anything.

JOHN KENNEDY TOOLE A Confederacy of Dunces, 1980

[The film] is Hoop Dreams, a three-hour documentary about two black inner city kids who dream of playing in the NBA, the professional basketball league and Xanadu to every deprived teenager who can dribble 20 yards.

The Guardian, 1995

Illusion

BARMECIDE'S FEAST and the DEAD SEA FRUIT are both examples of apparently delicious food not being what it seems and leading to disappointment, DON QUIXOTE and WALTER MITTY are cases of fantasists who construct alternative realities for themselves. • See also Honesty and Truth, Hypocrisy.

Apples of Sodom • See DEAD SEA FRUIT.

Barmecide's Feast In the Arabian Nights, a prince of Baghdad named Barmecide invites Schacabac, a poor beggar, to dine with him. The table is set with ornate plates and dishes, but all are empty. When, to test Schacabac's humour, Barmecide asks his guest how he finds the food, and offers him illusory wine, Schacabac declines, pretending to be already drunk, and knocks Barmecide down. Relenting, Barmecide gives Schacabac a proper meal. Barmecide's name is used to describe something, especially food or hospitality, that is in fact illusory or unreal.

That night, on going to bed, I forgot to prepare in imagination the Barmecide supper of hot roast potatoes, or white bread and new milk, with which I was wont to amuse my inward cravings.

CHARLOTTE BRONTE Jane Eyre, 1847

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Your lighter boxes of family papers went up-stairs into a Barmecide room that always had a great dining-table in it and never had a dinner.

CHARLES DICKENS A Tale of Two Cities, 1859

It was a curious sort of a feast, I reflected, in appearance indeed, an entertainment of the Barmecide stamp, for there was absolutely nothing to eat.

RIDER HAGGARD She, 1887

Dead Sea Fruit The Dead Sea Fruit, also known as Apples of Sodom, were fruits reputed to grow at Sodom, near the Dead Sea. They were beautiful to look at but bitter to the taste or full of ashes, and the expression is now used of anything that promises pleasure but brings only disappointment.

Like Dead Sea fruits, that tempt the eye,

But turn to ashes on the lips!

THOMAS MORE Lalla Rookh, 1817

Your poor mother's fond wish, gratified at last in the mocking way in which over-fond wishes are too often fulfilled—Sodom apples as they are—has brought on this crisis.

ELIZABETH GASKELL North and SOUth, 1854 - 5

He had looked for rapturous joy in loving this lovely creature, and he already found that he met with little but disappointment and self-rebuke. He had come across the fruit of the Dead Sea, so sweet and delicious to the eye, so bitter and nauseous to the taste.

ANTHONY TROLLOPE Barchester Towers, 1857

Don Quixote In Cervantes's romance Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605-15), Don Quixote cannot distinguish the fanciful from the real. In a famous episode he attacks a group of windmills in the belief that they are giants. In Don Quixote's confused mind, a good-looking village girl, whom he names Dulcinea del Toboso, is elevated to the ideal of womanly beauty and virtue. Don Quixote can represent someone who fights against illusory evils, or someone who does not see things as they really are. • See special entry •

on p. 128.

We are most of us like Don Quixote, to whom a windmill was a giant, and Dulcinea a magnificent princess: all more or less the dupes of our own imagination.

THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK Nightmare Abbey, 1818

Emperor's New Clothes Hans Christian Anderson's story of The Emperor's New Clothes, firstpublished in 1836, tells the story of an emperor obsessed with beautiful clothes. He is visited by two swindlers who promise to make him the most beautiful clothes ever seen. Using an empty loom, they pretend to weave the cloth and stitch the clothes, telling the emperor that the cloth they are using is invisible to anyone who is unfit for his office or stupid. Although no one, including the emperor, can see the clothes, all collude in the deception for fear of appearing foolish or incompetent. The emperor parades naked through the streets of the town, with all the people cheering except for one small boy who cries, 'But the Emperor has nothing on at all!' 'The Emperor's New Clothes' can describe something that is promised or believed in but does not in fact exist.

Common sense is a very poor guide to scientific insight for it represents cultural

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prejudice more often than it reflects the native honesty of a small boy before the naked emperor.

STEPHEN JAY GOULD Ever Since Darwin, 1978

transforms the dull reality of his life into a series of spectacular adventures in which he is the brave and undefeated hero. A 'Walter Mitty' is thus someone who lives in a world of his own imagination and does not face reality.

Compulsive shoppers can ring for help when they have the urge to buy something expensive; former sufferer Lawrence Michaels will try to talk them out of it. A lot are Walter Mittys who need to face reality,' says Michaels, who chairs self-help group Walletwatch.

The Observer, 1997

Immobility

Two ideas are covered here: being immobilized (CULLIVER, TIN MAN) and being brought to a standstill (JOSHUA). • See also Captives, Movement.

Daphne In Greek mythology, Daphne was a nymph, daughter of Peneus, with whom the god Apollo fell in love. In attempting to escape his pursuit, Daphne called upon the gods for help and was turned into a laurel tree. She is often depicted in art, literally rooted to the spot as she undergoes her transformation.

Alexander slid into the seat beside her, Alexander's Old Spice smell brushed her nostrils, Alexander's soft-modulated voice murmured no, surely not muscle-bound, but with her nerves chained up in alabaster and she a statue, or as Daphne was, root-bound, that fled Apollo.

A. s. BYATT The Virgin in the Garden, 1978

Gulliver In a famous episode at the beginning of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726), the shipwrecked Gulliver wakes on the shore to find himself unable to move because the tiny Lilliputians have fastened his limbs, hair, and body to the ground with strings. • See special entry • CULLIVER'S TRAVELS on p. 171.

Hypotheses pinned me down, as Culliver was pinned by the countless threads of the Lilliputians.

JOHN FOWLES The Magus, 1977

As a great 'No!' burst from deep in his chest, he stood, not quickly, but as Culliver might have, had he been better able to resist the ropes of the Lilliputians.

PETER CAREY Jack Maggs, 1997

Joshua Joshua, Moses' successor as leader of Israel, led the Israelites in their return to the land of Canaan. The Book of Joshua includes an account of the