1889 Exposition Universelle Bibliography

 

*I was fortunate enough to teach a 1001 Nights film and literature course last Fall (2021). And I'm even more fortunate to have had such great students. They've let me share their work with you. Bibliography, Annotated Bibliography, and a further report on one article related to their topic (which in some cases is loosely Nights-related). I'll be posting them over the next few weeks. 

**I messed up the formats with my copying and pasting but you know. - M

Here is Shaanel's work on the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle - 

Shaanel Saroch

Professor Michael Lundell

English 260

14 December 2021

Research Project

Part One: Extended Bibliography

“About Us about the Bie Who We Are How We Work Our History the 1928 Paris Convention FAQS about Expos What Is an Expo? How Is an Expo Organised? A Short History of Expos.” Official Site of the Bureau International Des Expositions, https://www.bie-paris.org/site/en/1889-paris. 

Anido, Julien. “The Exposition Universelle of 1889: Un Jour De plus à Paris.” Un Jour De plus à Paris | L'incontournable Des Visites Culturelles Et Touristiques à Paris. Balades, Visites Guidées, Découvertes Insolites... Visitez Paris Autrement !, 29 July 2020, https://www.unjourdeplusaparis.com/en/paris-reportage/exposition-universelle-1889. 

Bibesco, Georges. Exposition Universelle 1889. Impr. Typ. J. Kugelmann, 1890. 

Catalogue général Officiel: Exposition rétrospective Du Travail Et Des Sciences Anthropologiques. Imprimerie L. Danel, 1889. 

Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., https://www.britannica.com/topic/International-Exposition-of-1889. 

“Exposition Universelle (1889).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 25 Nov. 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposition_Universelle_(1889). 

Exposition Universelle De 1889, https://www.nga.gov/research/library/imagecollections/photographs-of-international-expositions/exposition-universelle-de-1889.html. 

Jonnes, Jill. Eiffel's Tower and the World's Fair Where Buffalo Bill Beguiled Paris, the Artists Quarreled, and Thomas Edison Became a Count. Viking, 2009. 

"Mephisto", the Marvellous Automaton, Exhibited at the International Theatre, Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1889. T. Pettitt & Co, 1889. 

“Paris 1889 Exposition: History, Images, Interpretation.” Ideas, http://www.arthurchandler.com/paris-1889-exposition. 

“Paris Exposition of 1889.” Paris Exposition of 1889 (Prints and Photographs Reading Room, Library of Congress), https://www.loc.gov/rr/print/coll/250_paris.html. 

Paris-exposition... / Exposition universelle de 1889. A. Colin (Paris), 1889.

Paris: Capital of the 19th Century, https://library.brown.edu/cds/paris/worldfairs.html. 

“The Rue Du Caire at the Exposition Universelle in Paris (1889): Patrimoines Partagés تراث مشترك.” The Rue Du Caire at the Exposition Universelle in Paris (1889) | Patrimoines Partagés تراث مشترك, https://heritage.bnf.fr/bibliothequesorient/en/street-of-cairo-art. 

Sabry, Randa. “Le Témoignage d’Amīn Fikrī Sur l’Exposition Universelle de 1889 et La Rue Du Caire : Petite Polémique Avec Timothy Mitchell.” Arabica, vol. 2018, no. 3, Brill, 2018, pp. 368–91, https://doi.org/10.1163/15700585-12341493.

Sayers, Isabelle S. Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill's Wild West. Dover, 1981. 

“World's Fair - Official Eiffel Tower Website.” La Tour Eiffel, 8 Apr. 2020, https://www.toureiffel.paris/en/the-monument/universal-exhibition. 

Part Two: Annotated Bibliography

Paris-exposition... / Exposition universelle de 1889. A. Colin (Paris), 1889.

The author created this book as a guide to visitors of the Exposition Universelle in 1889. The beginning of the book has maps of the exposition so that the reader can see where the different things to do and see are located. Further on there is a map of different areas in Paris associated with the exposition. The author details what he believes are the most interesting things to see at the exposition so that visitors need not waste time on less interesting displays. There is also a schedule of when certain events are happening and a description of the public transportation that could be used to get to the exposition. This guide is very useful in finding out what exactly went on at the exposition. 

Jonnes, Jill. Eiffel's Tower and the World's Fair Where Buffalo Bill Beguiled Paris, the Artists Quarreled, and Thomas Edison Became a Count. Viking, 2009. 

This book provides the back story of why the Exposition Universelle was created. The book also details different major personalities that were present at the exposition such as Buffalo Bill, Gustave Eiffel and Thomas Edison. While these personalities are famous now and were well known at the time as well, the book also lists people that were relatively unknown at the time who are now famous. Some of these people were Van Gogh, Whistler and Gaugin. The book makes the reader feel as if they are personally experiencing the Exposition Universelle in 1889. 

Sabry, Randa. “Le Témoignage d’Amīn Fikrī Sur l’Exposition Universelle de 1889 et La Rue Du Caire : Petite Polémique Avec Timothy Mitchell.” Arabica, vol. 2018, no. 3, Brill, 2018, pp. 368–91, https://doi.org/10.1163/15700585-12341493.

This article discusses a man named Amin Fikri’s visit to the 1889 Exposition Universelle. He details the Rue du Caire which was a street, built for the exposition, meant to emulate a busy street in Cairo. Buildings on the street were made from demolished buildings from Egypt. The author also discusses how the previous expositions in Paris had different versions of the Rue du Caire. In the 1867 exposition there was a medieval Egyptian palace. This article is a good resource for visualizing the Egyptian displays at the various expositions. 

Part Three

Paris: Capital of the 19th Century, https://library.brown.edu/cds/paris/worldfairs.html. 

Author: The author of this piece is Pauline De Tholozany. This text was created as a collaboration between the departments of French Studies and Comparative Literature at Brown University. These departments relevance to the topic is that the Exposition Universelle in 1889 occurred in Paris, France and the authors use different sources of literature to detail the events. The author seems like an expert in this field because they comprehensively cover all the various expositions that occurred in France from 1855 to 1900. The French Studies department’s contact information is french_francophone_studies@brown.edu. Their online bio is located at https://www.brown.edu/academics/french-studies/. The Comparative Literature department’s contact information is Comp_lit@Brown.edu. Their online bio is located at https://complit.brown.edu/. I did not attempt to contact them. 

Thesis: The thesis of this text is that the purpose of the Expositions Universelle in Paris was to showcase technology and art and to boost the economy. The thesis is built by highlighting the various events and displays that were held during the Expositions Universelle. The evidence the authors use to support their thesis are several primary and secondary sources from the Brown University library such as books with firsthand accounts of the expositions and different artwork that show scenes from the expositions. The question that the author is responding to is “why were the expositions in Paris held?”

Critique: Elements of this text that are good specifically is that the text covers the politic climate, attitudes towards the fairs, and the most interesting events at the fairs. This allows the reader to feel like they were present at the fairs and as if the reader has an eye into the inner working of the fair organizers. Another good element of this text is that the authors used excellent sources while writing the text so there is a lot of interesting and informative data. There were not really any issues to address on this topic in this text other than dispelling rumors of people feeling negatively towards the Eiffel tower and talk of wanting to prevent its construction. The issue is addressed by saying what the actual public sentiment around the Eiffel tower was. One thing that is lacking in my text is any talk of public figures that were present at the 1889 Exposition Universelle. Personalities such as Wild Bill Hickok, Thomas Edison, and Vincent Van Gogh were all present at this exposition and it would have been interesting to read more about their interaction with the exposition. 

Timeliness: This text was written in 2011. The text utilized other relevant scholarship as resources for creating this piece. I don’t believe that timeliness is relevant or important to investigate for this text’s focus because the article is reporting on events that occurred a long time ago for historical purposes. This text does not really have any effect on current events, so timeliness is not an issue. 

Relevance: This text is extremely relevant to the topic of Exposition Universelle 1889. The text not only details the Exposition Universelle that occurred in 1889 it also describes the other expositions that occurred in France and performs some comparison of the fairs in order to understand the different impacts of the fairs on the events of that time period. The only new information that this article gives on the topic is discussing the Exposition Universelle 1889 in relation to the other expositions. I did not find information like this in any of the other texts that I read.

Future Ideas: A course on the topic of the Exposition Universelle that occurred in 1889 could incorporate this text in the beginning of the course as a historical background to this particular exposition and its relation to the other expositions that occurred. An essay assignment on this text might pose questions like “which exposition had the greatest effect on French culture,” “What is the most significant technological advance that came from the Exposition Universelle that occurred in 1889,” or “What impact did the Exposition Universelle in 1889 have on the art world at that time.” All of these questions would make for essays that I would be interested in reading. 

What I Learned: One new thing that I learned about my topic from this specific text is that the Exposition Universelle took some of the power away from the Salon. The Salon was the only way to get your art publicly exhibited in France around this time. It was very difficult to get one’s art in the Salon and the people who chose the art that would be displayed were very political and exclusionary. During the Exposition Universelle artists were able to display their art without the judgement and control of the Salon. This had a huge impact on the art world at that time. What I might do in the future with this information is to apply this knowledge to the art history class I will be taking next semester. Previously I took a class on art that discussed the Salon but did not go in depth about it. As I take various courses, I feel like I learn a little bit in each class that adds up like pieces of a puzzle and eventually I have a greater understanding of a bigger picture of what happened during certain times in history. 

An Overview of Research Methodologies: I found this source by googling the Exposition Universelle in 1889. I chose this article because it came from a reputable source such as the French Studies and Comparative Literature departments at Brown University. I also chose this article because it discussed all the expositions instead of just mentioning the exposition that I was studying. I felt like learning about the other expositions gave context to the specific exposition that I was interested in. 

Chateaubriand’s Travels in Greece, Palestine

 

“From a new work, ‘Chateaubriand’s Travels in Greece, Palestine, &c. in 1806 & 1807,’ we extract the following interesting passages, descriptive of various scenes”

It was midnight when we arrived at the kan of Menemen. I perceived at a distance a great number of scattered lights : it was a caravan making a halt. On a nearer approach I distinguished camels, some lying, others standing, some with their load others relieved from the burden. Horses and asses without bridles were eating barley out of leather buckets;  some of the men were still on horseback, and the women, veiled, had not alighted from their dromedaries. Turkish merchants were seated cross-legged on carpets in groups round the fires, at which the slaves were busily employed in dressing pilau. Other travellers were smoking their pipes at the door of the kan, chewing opium, and listening to stories. Here were people burning coffee in iron pots ; the hucksters went about from fire to fire offering cakes, fruit and poultry for sale. Singers were amusing the crowd; imans were performing their ablutions, prostrating themselves, rising again and invoking the prophet; and the camel-drivers lay snoring on the ground. The place was strewed with packages, bags of cotton, and couffs of rice. All these objects, now distinct and reflecting a vivid light, now confused and enveloped in a half shade, exhibited a genuine scene of the Arabian Nights. It wanted nothing but the caliph Haroun al Raschid, the vizir Giaffar, and Mesrour, the chief of the black eunuchs."

"Travels in Greece, &c." National Intelligencer, 15 Apr. 1813. Accessed 4 Mar. 2021.

New Translation of Aladdin

W.W. Norton and Company are set to release a new, stand-alone English translation of Aladdin in November of 2018. It will be translated by Yasmine Seale and edited by Paulo Lemos Horta.

From their website – http://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail.aspx?ID=4294996827

A dynamic French-Syrian translator, lauded for her lively poetic voice, tackles the enchanted world of Aladdin in this sparkling new translation.

Long defined by popular film adaptations that have reductively portrayed Aladdin as a simplistic rags-to-riches story for children, this work of dazzling imagination—and occasionally dark themes—finally comes to vibrant new life. “In the capital of one of China’s vast and wealthy kingdoms,” begins Shahrazad— the tale’s imperiled-yet-ingenious storyteller—there lived Aladdin, a rebellious fifteen-year-old who falls prey to a double-crossing sorcerer and is ultimately saved by the ruse of a princess.

One of the best-loved folktales of all time, Aladdin has been capturing the imagination of readers, illustrators, and filmmakers since an eighteenth-century French publication first added the tale to The Arabian Nights. Yet, modern English translators have elided the story’s enchanting whimsy and mesmerizing rhythms. Now, translator Yasmine Seale and literary scholar Paulo Lemos Horta offer an elegant, eminently readable rendition of Aladdin in what is destined to be a classic for decades to come.

Ali Baba et les quarante voleurs (Ferdinand Zecca, 1905)

Here is the short silent Ali Baba et les quarante voleurs from France (Ferdinand Zecca, 1905). Other release dates I've seen have included 1902.



More on Zecca - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0954087/

Arthur Rimbaud - "Conte" ("Tale")

Here is Rimbaud's Nights inspired poem "Conte," from Illuminations (1946, New Directions, translated by Louise Varese)

TALE

A Prince was vexed at having devoted himself only to the perfection of ordinary generosities. He foresaw astonishing revolutions of love and suspected his women of being able to do better than their habitual acquiescence embellished by heaven and luxury. He wanted to see the truth, the hour of essential desire and gratification. Whether this was an aberration of piety or not, that is what he wanted. Enough worldly power, at least, he had.

All the women who had known him were assassinated; what havoc in the garden of beauty! At the point of the sword they blessed him. He did not order new ones.–The women reappeared.

He killed all those who followed him, after the hunt or the libations.–All followed him.

He amused himself cutting the throats of rare animals. He set palaces on fire. He would rush upon people and hack them to pieces.–The throngs, the gilded roofs, the beautiful animals still remained.

Can one be in ecstasies over destruction and by cruelty rejuvenated! The people did not complain. No one offered him the benefit of his views.

One evening he was proudly galloping. A Genie appeared, of ineffable beauty, unavowable even. In his face and in his bearing shone the promise of a complex and multiple love! of an indescribable happiness, unendurable even. The Prince and the Genie annihilated each other probably in essential health. How could they have helped dying of it? Together then they died.

But this Prince died in his palace at an ordinary age, the Prince was the Genie, the Genie was the Prince.–There is no sovereign music for our desire.

Conte

Un prince était vexé de ne s'être employé jamais qu'à la perfection des générosités vulgaires. Il prévoyait d'étonnantes révolutions de l'amour, et soupçonnait ses femmes de pouvoir mieux que cette complaisance agrémentée de ciel et de luxe. Il voulait voir la vérité, l'heure du désir et de la satisfaction essentiels. Que ce fût ou non une aberration de piété, il voulut. Il possédait au moins un assez large pouvoir humain.

Toutes les femmes qui l'avaient connu furent assassinées : quel saccage du jardin de la beauté ! Sous le sabre, elles le bénirent. Il n'en commanda point de nouvelles. - Les femmes réapparurent.
Il tua tous ceux qui le suivaient, après la chasse ou les libations. - Tous le suivaient.

Il s'amusa à égorger les bêtes de luxe. Il fit flamber les palais. Il se ruait sur les gens et les taillait en pièces. - La foule, les toits d'or, les belles bêtes existaient encore.

Peut-on s'extasier dans la destruction, se rajeunir par la cruauté ! Le peuple ne murmura pas. Personne n'offrit le concours de ses vues.

Un soir, il galopait fièrement. Un Génie apparut, d'une beauté ineffable, inavouable même. De sa physionomie et de son maintien ressortait la promesse d'un amour multiple et complexe ! d'un bonheur indicible, insupportable même ! Le Prince et le Génie s'anéantirent probablement dans la santé essentielle. Comment n'auraient-ils pas pu en mourir ? Ensemble donc ils moururent.
Mais ce Prince décéda, dans son palais, à un âge ordinaire. Le Prince était le Génie. Le Génie était le Prince.

La musique savante manque à notre désir.

Monaco Stamp - 2004

 

JC at Wollamshram has a great collection of 1001 Nights inspired stamps on his blog, including a very insightful post on this (pictured) one from Monaco - http://wollamshram.wordpress.com/2013/06/08/stamps-of-the-arabian-nights-part-11/

1001 Nights in Paris

The Institut du monde arabe in Paris is holding a Nights-themed exhibit through April of 2013.

From AFP: http://www.france24.com/en/20121126-1001-nights-cast-spell-paris-expo

"AFP - Full of flying carpets, genies, love and battle, a Paris show opening Tuesday lifts the curtain on "One Thousand and One Nights", exploring the roots of the folk tales and their powerful influence in the West.

Through some 350 manuscripts, artworks, artefacts and film clips, the show at the Arab World Institute traces the tales' journey from their origin in Indian and Persian folkore, to their translation into Arabic in the eighth century.

And it highlights how the French Orientalist Antoine Galland brought the "Nights" to Western audiences in 1704, translating a manuscript of 35 original tales, and weaving in 35 others gleaned from his studies of the region."

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"A Pablo Picasso sketch and an abstract painting by Rene Magritte feature among the many representations of the beguiling beauty at the heart of "The Arabian nights", as the tales are sometimes known in the English-speaking world.

"Scheherazade remains for many a symbol of the emancipating power of speech, of knowledge's triumph over tyranny and a woman's courage in the face of injustice," write the curators.
The show also notes, however, that some modern feminists blame the figure of Scheherazade for perpetuating a narrow vision of women in the Arab world.

Wood-and-bone doors from 15th century Egypt or Syria, or a tiny glazed ceramic oil lamp from ninth-century Egypt -- intend to recreate the setting of the tales, between the great cities of Baghdad, Damascus or Cairo.

And visitors can settle into a listening booth to hear one of 15 tales, or catch a clip from one of 12 movies inspired by the "Nights", from the 1924 "The Thief of Baghdad" with Douglas Fairbanks to Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1974 version."


Their website (in French) - http://www.imarabe.org/

Check out their youtube site as well for commercials about the events - http://www.youtube.com/imarabe

Conference: The Syrian-French Connection: Antoine Galland’s and Hanna Diyab’s Arabian Nights Sources

Here's a call for papers for this upcoming conference in Copenhagen, if you are interested in attending contact the organizers below, I'm sure they will try and fit you in even though the deadline has passed. Unfortunately my funds as a grad student are limited otherwise I'd be very excited to try to present something.

----------------------------

Call for Papers / Appel à communication


Copenhagen 2012: May 31 – June 2

International Conference
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Organization : University of Copenhagen, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies
Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA, Paris)
Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO, Paris)
Agence Nationale de la Recherche, MSFIMA project
Centre de Recherche Moyen-Orient et Méditerranée (CERMOM, EA 4091– INALCO)
with the support of The Danish Research Council for the Humanities (FKK)

------------

The Syrian-French Connection: Antoine Galland’s and Hanna Diyab’s Arabian Nights
Sources, Transmissions and Influences of the First Occidental Corpus of the
Nights


What are the Arabian Nights today? There are several possible answers to this
question. There is no doubt that this piece of literature is the outcome of
medieval Islamic civilization, the richest and most influential in the literary
sphere, in cinema and the arts. It is also in the field of the imaginary a
symbol at an international level. It is perhaps first of all a fruitful
cooperation between several languages, several cultures and several geographic
areas encompassing the Occident as well as the Orient…
The idea of this colloquium is to take as a point of departure the creation that
involved several cultures and to follow how the result was transformed and in
various ways had its impact in several fields of the arts. In the 8th century,
when the book was adapted from middle Persian into Arabic, the result was a new
work that involved both cultures, Persian and Arabic. The focus of the
colloquium is another transformation, when, many centuries later, Arabic and
European cultures interacted in a highly significant manner, i.e. at the
beginning of the 18th century, when a manuscript of the Arabian Nights was
brought from Aleppo to Paris, and a dozen new tales were told by a learned
Syrian, Hanna Diyab, to a French oriental scholar, Antoine Galland, who chose
eight of them and added them to his translation of the Nights. The manuscript
from Aleppo is one of the oldest and most important of the Nights. It was edited
in 1984 (Mahdi, Leiden). The eight new tales have been called the ‘orphan tales’
(Gerhardt, 1963), since they were not included in any of the manuscript versions
of the Nights - a somewhat curious denomination, since there were actually two
fathers, Hanna Diyab, who knew the stories by heart and in his own manner told
them to Galland, who then created his own French adaptations. The volumes
published by Galland thus include tales from the Nights as well as new tales.
These volumes turned out to be a major cultural and literary event that would
have a profound impact on European literature at the time and lasting effects
all the way into contemporary culture. Some of the eight new tales have had a
particularly remarkable fate, Ali Baba has, e.g., after several dozens of
cinematic adaptations (25 versions in Urdu between 1930 and 1980, just to quote
one example), also recently been turned into a movie (Pierre Aknine, 2007). A
similar success does obviously raise a number of questions. Yet Ali Baba is not
the only French-Syrian tale that has been remarkably successful. Aladdin has
similarly sparked a number of adaptations, of particular importance is the
Danish case, where Oehlenschlaeger’s drama-version, Aladdin and the Magic Lamp
(1805), not only is a major classic, the Aladdin-character has moreover been a
point of reference all the way through the 19th century for numerous literary
texts as well as important cultural controversies. Another example: one of the
outstanding works of silent cinema, The Thief of Bagdad (1926), is also based on
one of the Diyab-Galland-tales, i.e. Prince Ahmed, but also on the story about
Aladdin. All of this invites us to ask two essential questions:
1) What was the role of the Syrian community in Paris at the beginning of the
18th century in the transfer of culture from the Orient to the Occident? What
did the orally transferred tales and the manuscripts of the Nights that were
brought from Aleppo to Paris (in particular the so called Galland-manuscript -
number 3609-3611 at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France) represent?
2) What are the characteristic features of the new tales that were brought to
Antoine Galland by Hanna Diyab? What is their ‘history’, their narrative
organization, their function? What was the cultural influence of the ‘mixed’ or
’hybrid’ tales, like Aladdin or Ali Baba? What is in general the afterlife of
this new material in literature, cinema, and the arts? How can we grasp the
reasons for the immense success of these tales?


This colloquium will also contribute to the preparation of the exhibition on the
Arabian Nights that will take place at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris in
November 2012, some of the contributions will be published in the exhibition
catalogue.



* *
*


Participation : Those who wish to participate are kindly requested to send an
abstract of no more than 500 words or one A4 page (double-spaced) to Peter
Madsen (pmadsen@hum.ku.dk ) and Aboubakr Chraïbi (aboubakr.chraibi@inalco.fr )
before 2011 December 15.




* *
*


Appel à communication


Copenhague 31 mai – 2 juin 2012

----

Organisation : University of Copenhagen, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies
Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA, Paris)
Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO, Paris)
Agence Nationale de la Recherche, projet MSFIMA
Centre de Recherche Moyen-Orient et Méditerranée (CERMOM, EA 4091– INALCO)
avec le soutien du Danish Research Council for the Humanities (FKK)

Colloque international

La composante franco-syrienne : Les Mille et une nuits d’Antoine Galland et de
Hanna Diyab.
Sources, transmissions et influences du premier corpus occidental des Nuits


Qu’est-ce que les Mille et une nuits aujourd’hui ? Plusieurs réponses sont
possibles. C’est sans doute l’ouvrage de l’islam médiéval, comme civilisation,
le plus riche et le plus influent sur la littérature, le cinéma et les arts.
C’est aussi un symbole, dans l’imaginaire, à l’échelle internationale. C’est
peut-être surtout l’histoire d’une coopération réussie entre plusieurs langues,
plusieurs cultures et plusieurs espaces géographiques, qui englobent Orient et
Occident …

L’objectif de ce colloque est précisément de prendre comme point de départ la
perspective d’une création commune, et de continuer ensuite vers les
transformations successives de l’ouvrage, jusqu’aux modalités de sa diffusion et
de son influence sur les différents arts. Au VIIIe siècle, lorsque le livre a
été adapté du moyen persan en arabe, il en a résulté une création nouvelle,
partagée par les deux cultures, arabe et persane. Pour nous, il s’agit de nous
situer au moment d’un autre passage, lorsque, bien plus tard, les cultures arabe
et européenne vont jouer ensemble un rôle significatif, c’est-à-dire au début du
XVIIIe siècle, avec le transfert d’un manuscrit des Mille et une nuits d’Alep à
Paris, et la transmission d’une douzaine de contes nouveaux par un lettré
syrien, Hanna Diyab, à un orientaliste français, Antoine Galland, qui en
choisira huit et les ajoutera à sa traduction des Mille et une nuits. Le
manuscrit importé d’Alep est l’un des plus anciens et des plus importants des
Nuits. Il a été édité en 1984 (Mahdi, Leyde). Et ces huit contes nouveaux ont
souvent été appelés orphan stories (Gerhardt, 1963), car ils ne se trouvaient
naturellement dans aucune version manuscrite des Nuits, ce qui est en soi assez
plaisant, lorsqu’on sait qu’ils avaient en réalité non pas un mais deux pères :
Hanna Diyab qui les connaissait par cœur et les a racontés à sa manière à
Galland, et celui-ci qui les a adaptés en français. Au total, la traduction de
Galland, qui mêle donc contes des Nuits et contes nouveaux, représente un
événement majeur qui va affecter profondément la littérature européenne de
l’époque et dont les effets se poursuivront jusqu’à aujourd’hui. Parmi les huit
contes ajoutés, certains ont eu en effet un destin particulièrement remarquable.
Par exemple, Ali Baba, après avoir été adapté au cinéma des dizaines de fois (25
versions différentes tournées par exemple en ourdou entre 1930 et 1980), a
encore fait l’objet récemment d’un nouveau film (Pierre Aknine, 2007). Un tel
succès suscite bien entendu de nombreuses questions. Mais Ali Baba n’est pas le
seul conte franco-syrien à être devenu aussi célèbre, Aladdin est une création
du même genre, en particulier au Danemark où la pièce d’Oehlenschlaeger Aladdin
ou la lampe merveilleuse (1805) est un grand classique et où ce personnage a été
tout au long du 19e s. une référence récurrente dans de nombreux textes
littéraires et de nombreux débats savants. L'une des œuvres majeures du cinéma
muet, Le voleur de Bagdad (1926), est basée sur Le prince Ahmed et la Fée Péri
Banou (autre conte de Galland-Diyab), mais aussi sur Aladdin. En somme, ces
observations induisent deux questions essentielles :

1 – Quel était le rôle de la communauté syrienne présente à Paris au début du
XVIIIe siècle dans le passage du savoir d’Orient en Occident ? Que
représentaient alors les contes oraux et les manuscrits des Mille et une nuits
transférés d’Alep à Paris (en particulier le manuscrit de la BnF n° 3609-3611
dit de Galland) ?
2 – Comment peut-on identifier ces contes nouveaux rapportés par Hanna Diyab à
Antoine Galland ? Quelle est leur « histoire », leur composition, leur
fonction ? Comment ces contes « mixtes » ou « hybrides », comme Aladdin et Ali
Baba, ont-ils influencé d’autres ouvrages ? Qu’elle est plus généralement la
postérité dans la littérature, le cinéma et les arts de cette matière nouvelle ?
Comment doit-on comprendre son immense succès ?

Ce colloque servira notamment à préparer l'exposition Mille et une nuits qui
aura lieu à l'Institut du Monde Arabe en novembre 2012 à Paris et certaines
communications seront intégrées au catalogue de l'exposition.

* *
*

Participation : Les personnes désireuses de participer sont priées d'envoyer le
titre de leur communication, accompagné d'un abstract (maximum 500 mots ou une
feuille A 4, interligne double), à Aboubakr Chraïbi (aboubakr.chraibi@inalco.fr
) et à Peter Madsen (pmadsen@hum.ku.dk ) avant le 15 décembre 2011.

Samia Gamal

The legendary Samia Gamal was an actress and dancer from Egypt who also made it big in foreign films, including France's Ali Baba with French comedian Fernandel.

Here she is dancing in Ali Baba, aka Ali Baba et les quarante voleurs (1954).



She also stars in the 1949 Nights-related film Afrita hanem, (And I just wrote its English wikipedia page, feel free to add to it - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrita_hanem), where she plays a dancer/genie.

More on Samia Gamal - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samia_Gamal

"The French Translations of The Thousand and One Nights"

I'm excited by current trends in Nights scholarship that are focusing on specific versions, because there is several lifetimes of things to look into on the Nights, particularly by focusing on only one of its versions.

This speech below is from a Princeton website from 2003. Professor David Wrisly of the American University in Beirut is studying the particulars surrounding the 1806 French version of Jean-Jacques Antoine Caussin de Perceval (1759-1835).

The following is from the website http://www.princeton.edu/rbsc/fellowships/2002-03/wrisley.html.

"David Wrisley
American University of Beruit

"The French Translations of The Thousand and One Nights"

The English-speaking world knows the Arabian Nights by the famous translations of Burton and Lane. The first European translation of those medieval Arabic of stories entitled "Alf Leila wa Leila" was made, however, by the orientalist Antoine Galland. He published this work in French in twelve volumes between 1706 and 1720. Between that early eighteenth-century translation and the second major translation in French made by Joseph Mardrus a century later (1808-12), a flurry of other editions and reprints (some 75 according to Chauvin's Bibliographie des ouvrages arabes) of the Galland text appeared first in French and then in the other major languages across Europe.

J.H. Hanford's article for the Princeton Library Chronicle (XXVI, 1964-65) on the diverse collection of the Arabian Nights in English held at the Princeton University Library along with my scholarly interests in the practice of orientalist scholarship and the history of translation inspired me to take a look at the variety of French translations. Thanks to a Friends of the Princeton University Library short-term visiting fellowship, I was able to study in detail a number of these eighteenth-century French editions of the Galland translation in the summer of 2002.

In my research I noted not only on the textual modifications from edition to edition, but also investigated the French orientalists responsible for those editions. After examining the Galland edition ([Ex] 2263.2706.2), its form and its content, I chose to study the subsequent "reprints" of that base translation, in particular a fascinating one composed in nine volumes by Caussin de Perceval printed in 1806 ([Ex] 3229.616.123). From my research I intend to draft an article based on the latter, situating it in the context of French literary history of the period. I intend to focus on the plethora of paratextual material included in the eighteenth-century editions (notes, prefaces, commentaries) that give us an idea of the cultural meaning and worth of this translation to Europe. Linguistic features of the various translations from Arabic are complex and are detailed in the introduction to the now standard edition by Hussain Haddawy (1990-95).

Jean-Jacques Antoine Caussin de Perceval (1759-1835) was one of the well-placed orientalists in France in the generations following Antoine Galland's death in 1715. As a young man he was curator of the king's Oriental manuscripts. Later in life, he was appointed professor at the Collège de France. He made translations into French, in 1796 Apollonius of Rhodes' Expedition of the Argonauts from Greek, and in 1802 Howain's History of Sicily. In that same year, he published a two-volume Suite des mille et une nuits. Caussin was not alone in wanting to expand the original edition of Galland. Others such as Jacques Cazotte, a Frenchman who lived in Martinique, solicited the help of a Levantine (i.e. Arabic-speaking) monk to "translate" other tales not included in the manuscript held by Galland. No medieval edition of the text actually contained 1001 stories, but the popularity of the translations in Europe created a "demand for a complete edition" (Beaumont). Indeed, a textual history of the tradition of the 1001 Nights (to this day incomplete) would have to take into account numerous forgeries, inventions and varied sources from the Orient. It has been argued that the European expanded versions of the 1001 Nights even shaped, as if in a game of mirrors, the content of modern Arabic editions in India and Egypt by exporting new "authentic" texts.

The Princeton University Library's beautifully preserved 1806 edition in nine volumes of Caussin de Perceval gives one such example of a complex evolving textual history. Seven of the nine volumes contain a newly edited (and importantly, newly annotated) version of Galland's Mille et une nuits. The last two volumes complete the work, not only expanding the number of stories, but changing its overall scope and tone. It is to this composite work that I would like to turn.

Galland added footnotes occasionally to his tales of the Arabian Nights, thereby explaining some of the exoticism in his text. When Caussin de Perceval reprints Galland's text though, he takes this process of annotation to an entirely new level. At the beginning of the first volume, Caussin excerpts a portion of La Harpe's Lycée, the mammoth text of eighteenth-century literary historical scholarship. The passage chosen contains La Harpe's canonization and appropriation of the 1001 Nights as a great monument of "our literature." Caussin's editorial style continues in that spirit opening the medieval Arabic tales for the enjoyment and the edification of all readers and especially gens de lettres. In fact, this edition illustrates very well the professionalization of the Orientalist and the presentation of his erudition for public consumption.

At every turn, we are reminded by Caussin of the interest of such a text to the general reader, but unlike Galland's minimal annotation which seemed to privilege the literary integrity of the tales, Caussin's frequent interventions frame the 1001 Nights as a document of endless anthropological and historical interest. In the initial seven volumes (corresponding to Galland's original text) we read numerous footnotes commenting on questions of religious custom and the history of Islam, numismatics, Semitic etymologies, botanical and zoological facts, with even occasional comparisons to European cultural heritage. The last two volumes (8 and 9) illustrate most directly the spirit of Caussin's compilation. The stories themselves are taken from the same kind of "native informants" as those published by Cazotte and Chavis, yet Caussin is quick to distance himself from what he calls their "classicizing effect". He claims to translate the Arabic text more faithfully.

Caussin, it can be easily shown, also distances himself from Galland's style of translation where the clarity of the French-language text and its masterful composition can in and of itself please an audience. Caussin's 1806 text does not reflect the notion of language of a Boileau or a Racine, but suggests the something indeed has been lost in the translation. Annotation is essential. The philological commentary in volumes 8 and 9 is much more elaborate and Caussin even inserts back into the text transliterated Arabic and Persian fragments in italics which would seem designed to give back some the translation's lost authenticity. This re-orientalizing process goes along with a proliferation of commentary comparing the Arabic tales to great works in the Western tradition, Greco-Roman literature, medieval French and Italian stories and even the Song of Songs.

A further analysis of Caussin's edition will need to put these competing tendencies in his editorial practice into a larger context. His edition is after all both a testimony to his great predecessor Galland, and a renewal of the text, enriched by a (then) highly developed field of Oriental studies, created for a different audience with new expectations of Oriental literature and of the reading of foreign literature itself."

De Bagdad à Grenade, Miroirs des Mille et Une Nuits - 13-16 avril 2011 - Grenade, Espagne

De Bagdad à Grenade, Miroirs des Mille et Une Nuits - 13-16 avril 2011 - Grenade, Espagne

This is an upcoming conference in Granada, Spain with lots of interesting sounding panels and papers.  It is organized by Aboubakr Chraïbi, INALCO, Paris and Nathalie Bléser, U. de Grenade.

What a nice place for a Nights conference!

Most of the papers are in French, though a few are in English and Arabic.

You can find the whole program (mostly in French) here:  http://www.inalco.fr/ina_gabarit_article.php3?id_rubrique=2640&id_article=4879&id_secteur=1

I've also uploaded it to scribd here:

Programme Colloque GRENADE

 

Les Mille et une nuits, contes arabes - Antoine Galland

Archive.org has most of the old 1001 Nights scanned and readable either online or wherever you want to download them to (or print them).

Here are 9 volumes of Galland's Les Mille et une nuits, contes arabes - (French):


Volume One:

link: http://www.archive.org/details/lesmilleetunenu00unkngoog



Volume 2:

http://www.archive.org/details/lesmilleetunenui02galluoft

Volume 3:

http://www.archive.org/details/lesmilleetunenui03galluoft

Volume 4:

http://www.archive.org/details/lesmilleetunenui04galluoft

Volume 5:

http://www.archive.org/details/lesmilleetunenui05galluoft

Volume 6:

http://www.archive.org/details/lesmilleetunenui06galluoft

Volume 7:

http://www.archive.org/details/lesmilleetunenui07galluoft

Volume 8:

http://www.archive.org/details/lesmilleetunenui08galluoft

Volume 9:

http://www.archive.org/details/lesmilleetunenui09galluoft

sherazade the musical

Shiraz passes on information on a French language musical running in Quebec, Canada at the moment based on the Nights called "Sherazade."

Here is the website: http://www.sherazade1001nuits.com/home.htm

And a review/interview, also in French: http://lejournaldequebec.canoe.ca/journaldequebec/artsetspectacles/musique/archives/2009/12/20091217-215126.html

Fernandel - Alibaba et les 40 voleurs

Fernandel, the French comedian, actor and singer, sings his Ali Baba song in the French film Alibaba et les 40 voleurs(1954):