The Arabian Nights Reader

3.6/5 ( ratings)

The Arabian Nights commands a place in world literature unrivaled by any other fictional work of "Oriental" provenance. Bringing together Indian, Iranian, and Arabic tradition, this collection of tales became popular in the Western world during the eighteenth century and has since exerted a profound influence on theater, opera, music, painting, architecture, and literature. The Arabian Nights Reader offers an authoritative guide to the research inspired by this rich and intricate work. Through a selection of sixteen influential and currently relevant essays, culled from decades of scholarship, this volume encompasses the most salient research topics to date, from the Nights' early history to interpretations of such famous characters as Sheherazade.

While serious research on the Nights began early in the nineteenth century, some of the most puzzling aspects of the collection's complex history and character were solved only quite recently. This volume's topics reflect the makings of a transnational narrative: evidence of a ninth-century version of the Nights, the work's circulation among booksellers in twelfth-century Cairo, the establishment of a "canonical" text, the sources used by the French translator who introduced the Nights to the West and the dating of this French translation, the influence of Greek literature on the Nights, the genre of romance, the relationship between narration and survival within the plots, reception of the Nights from the nineteenth century onward, interpretations of single stories from the collection, the universal nature of the sexual politics surrounding Sheherazade, and the repercussion of the Nights in modern Arabic literature.

As this collection demonstrates, the Arabian Nights helped shape Western perceptions of the "Orient" as the quintessential "Other" while serving to inspire Western creativity. The research presented here not only deepens our insight into this great work but also heightens our awareness of the powerful communal forces of transnational narrative.

Language: English

Pages: 390

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Wayne State University Press

Release: August 01, 2006

ISBN: 0814332595

ISBN 13: 9780814332597

The Arabian Nights Reader

Ulrich Marzolph

3.6/5 ( ratings)

Read Download

Language: English

Pages: 390

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Wayne State University Press

Release: August 01, 2006

ISBN: 0814332595

ISBN 13: 9780814332597

3/5 ( ratings)

Rate this book!

Write a review?

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Popular Genres

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

The Arabian Nights Reader

The Arabian Nights Reader

The Arabian Nights Reader

More books from Ulrich Marzolph

قصه‌های مشدی گلین خانم: ۱۱۰ قصه‌ی عامیانه ایرانی

The Arabian Nights in Transnational Perspective

The Broken Spell: Indian Storytelling and the Romance Genre in Persian and Urdu

توپوز قلی میرزا: قصه‌های ایرانی

قصه‌ی نوش‌آفرین گوهرتاج

Oral Literature of Iranian Languages: Kurdish, Pashto, Balochi, Ossetic, Persian and Tajik: Companion Volume II: History of Persian Literature A, Vol XVIII

Narrative Illustration in Persian Lithographed Books

بهلول نامه

Oral Literature of Iranian Languages: Kurdish, Pashto, Balochi, Ossetic; Persian and Tajik: Companion Volume II: History of Persian Literature A, Vol XVIII

Nasreddin Hodscha: 666 wahre Geschichten

The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia; 2 Volumes

101 Middle Eastern Tales and Their Impact on Western Oral Tradition

Relief After Hardship: The Ottoman Turkish Model for the Thousand and One Days

Das Buch der wundersamen Geschichten. Erzählungen aus der Welt von Tausendundeine Nacht.

Nibelungenlied - Prozessmotive

Die Erzahlungen Der Masdi Galin Hanom: Teil 1: Text

Relief After Hardship: The Ottoman Turkish Model for the Thousand and One Days (The Donald Haase Series in Fairy-Tale Studies)

Gott Und Teufel Auf Wanderschaft - Hylt�n-Cavallius

Narrating (Hi)Stories: Storytelling in and about West-Africa

Bearbeitung - Christus und der Schmied (German Edition)