One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and The 1001 Nights

Melquiades the Gypsy and The Metal Ingots by Lozano Mary (for sale (with other Cien Anos inspired paintings) at: - http://fineartamerica.com/featured/6008-melquiades-the-gypsy-and-the-metal-ingots-lozano-mary.html)

Just finished teaching One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. A remarkable book and most surprising, perhaps, for its secret resilience to the outside world which, for the most part, has chosen to either vilify it as an unsurpassable hegemony or adore it in romantically annoying ways.

In any event, of course the Nights infuse themselves (in shadows) into the carpet of Solitude. They are everywhere after all. Here we have Aureliano Segundo discovering them wilting in his grandfather's forgotten workshop, having been brought to Macondo long ago (many years before?) by Melquiades:

"On the shelves were the books bound in a cardboard-like material, pale, like tanned human skin, and the manuscripts were intact. In spite of the room's having been shut up for many years, the air seemed fresher than in the rest of the house. Everything was so recent that several weeks later, when Ursula went into the room with a pail of water and a brush to wash the floor, there was nothing for her to do. Aureliano Segundo was deep in the reading of a book. Although it had no cover and the title did not appear anywhere, the boy enjoyed the story of a woman who sat at a table and ate nothing but kernels of rice, which she picked up with a pin, and the story of the fisherman who borrowed a weight for his net from a neighbor and when he gave him a fish in payment later it had a diamond in its stomach, and the one about the lamp that fulfilled wishes and about flying carpets. Surprised, he asked Ursula if all that was true and she answered him that it was, that many years ago the gypsies had brought magic lamps and flying mats to Macondo" (183).

This is from the 1970 translation by Gregory Rabassa, Harperperennial's 2006 update & etc.

Wordsworth and the Nights

From The Prelude, by William Wordsworth ( published in 1850 but worked on during the poet's entire life, and a must read for everyone, wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prelude)

I had a precious treasure at that time,
A little yellow canvass-covered book,
A slender abstract of the Arabian Tales;
And when I learned, as now I first did learn
From my companions in this new abode,
That this dear prize of mine was but a block
Hewn from a mighty quarry — in a word,
That there were four large volumes, laden all
With kindred matter — ’twas in truth to me
A promise scarcely earthly. Instantly
I made a league, a covenant with a friend
Of my own age, that we should lay aside
The monies we possessed, and hoard up more,
Till our joint Savings had amassed enough
To make this book our own. Through several months
Religiously did we preserve that vow,
And spite of all temptation hoarded up,
And hoarded up; but firmness failed at length,
Nor were we ever masters of our wish.

And afterwards, when, to my father’s house
Returning at the holidays, I found
That golden store of books which I had left
Open to my enjoyment once again,
What heart was mine! Full often through the course
Of those glad respites in the summertime
When armed with rod and line we went abroad
For a whole day together, I have lain
Down by thy side, O Derwent, murmuring stream,
On the hot stones and in the glaring sun,
And there have read, devouring as I read,
Defrauding the day’s glory — desperate –
Till with a sudden bound of smart reproach
Such as an idler deals with in his shame,
I to my sport betook myself again.

From The Prelude, Book V, li. 482-515

Moby Dick - Herman Melville

Chapter 97

 

The Lamp

 

      Had you descended from the Pequod's try-works to the Pequod's forecastle, where the off duty watch were sleeping, for one single moment you would have almost thought you were standing in some illuminated shrine of canonized kings and counsellors.  There they lay in their triangular oaken vaults, each mariner a chiselled muteness; a score of lamps flashing upon his hooded eyes.

In merchantmen, oil for the sailor is more scarce than the milk of queens.  To dress in the dark, and eat in the dark, and stumble in darkness to his pallet, this is his usual lot.  But the whaleman, as he seeks the food of light, so he lives in light.  He makes his berth an Aladdin's lamp, and lays him down in it; so that in the pitchiest night the ship's black hull still houses an illumination.

See with what entire freedom the whaleman takes his handful of lamps - often but old bottles and vials, though - to the copper cooler at the try-works, and replenishes them there, as mugs of ale at a vat.  He burns, too, the purest of oil, in its unmanufactured, and, therefore, unvitiated state; a fluid unknown to solar, lunar, or astral contrivances ashore.  It is sweet as early grass butter in April.  He goes and hunts for his oil, so as to be sure of its freshness and geniuneness, even as the traveller on the prairie hunts up his own supper of game.

Aladdin from Broadway by Frederic Stewart Isham

Aladdin from Broadway is the name of a 1913 book by Frederic Stewart Isham.  A film by the same name was made in 1917.

Here is a link to the book in its entirety in many forms on archive.org - http://archive.org/details/aladdinfrombroad00ishaiala

I don't know anything about the book or film or author, the story begins in Damascus though!  I'll look into it at more length later, for now it's here.

Waciny Laredj - Arab Spring - 1001 Nights

Algerian writer Waciny Laredj (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waciny_Laredj) has a new novel based in part on a critique of dictatorships and on the 1001 Nights.  Thanks to Irfan for passing this along.  Not sure why his name is spelled Laredj in most English transliteration I've seen, the article below has his name as "al-A'raj," which is closer to the Arabic.

Entire article on the conference mentioned below:  http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/4466/the-international-symposium-on-the-arab-spring-thr


"Wasini al-A’raj, the prominent Algerian novelist and university professor, began his lecture by reminding the audience that political discourse is something ephemeral and goes with the wind, but the literary discourse, when genuine, will become a part of the individual memory, and eventually, the collective memory. According to him, the Tunisian Revolution paved the way for other Arab Revolutions and gave literature the opportunity “to express itself.” He raised the following question: “Is literature a reaction or an echo of the revolution, or is the writer just a bearer of a situation and a bearer of a conception?” Al-A’raj suggested that writing is the “soft element” that gives value to humanity. By “soft element,” he meant the writing about the Arab Revolutions without divinisation or glorification or the introduction of a superman. He called on writers to depict an ordinary protagonist, one who gives value to humanity and nobleness. He encouraged writers to express that which others do not, and to be rebels in an exceptional situation. “Now everyone speaks about the revolution,” said al-A’raj, “but nobleness is to say something that the others do not say. Besides, the space of democracy is of paramount importance in boosting the literary work, but the writer must not wait until he/she will be provided with such a space.”

In remembering recent Algerian history, al-A’raj questioned the reason behind the victimisation of about two hundred thousand persons in the nineties. He stated that writers at that time fell under two categories: Those that went hand in hand with the authority, and those that assumed its responsibility. He added, “I wrote the novel Sayyidat al-maqam: Marthiyyat al-yawm al-hazin (Mistress of the Shrine: Elegies for a Sad Day, 1995) to express myself within literature and not inside politics. In my novel Jumlukiyat Arabia (Reponarchy of Arabia), I conversed with authoritarianism and made Dinazade say things that Shahryar did not want to listen to.” Jumlukiyat is a coined term that combines jumhouria, meaning republic, and muloukiat, meaning kingdom.

What is striking about Jumlukiyat Arabia is that it is a parody of One Thousand and One Nights. Wasini al-A’raj’s work dives deeply into the realms of the oriental despotism through the depiction of the Arab dictator in all his facets, through a highly sophisticated artistic and fictional style that draws upon One Thousand and one Nights. The novel essentially gives a powerful voice to women and the marginalized, while denouncing the one-sided vision of the dictator, portraying him as a person who is inept and weak."

James Joyce's copy of Burton's Nights

Here's something you don't see everyday, and something I was particularly excited to get to look at, the volumes of Richard F. Burton's Nights that were a part of the library of James Joyce.  I don't know much about the particularities of the volumes, where Joyce bought them, etc., but do know he got them and read them (via a couple of articles by Aida Yared) after writing, or shortly before finishing, Ulysses.

They are housed as a part of the Poetry Collection of the University of Buffalo (NY) Libraries, along with a ton of Joyce related writings and other incredible things, like the original of Yeats' order form for Ulysses, and etc. etc.

Many thanks to the staff at the Library, very cool people, always be nice to your librarians, they run the world.

I took these pictures, but they are owned by The Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, so don't use them elsewhere!  Thank you!

As an aside, it is known that there are no markings in the books, and that most of the pages are cut (they used to have every page sealed, and you had to cut them to read them), but what has never (as far as I've read) been remarked on is that Volume 10 ("Terminal Essay," etc.) has a particularly well creased spine, the pages laid flat, unlike all of the other volumes (yes, I asked to look through all of them...), and, most interestingly, the pages of Volume 10 smelled of smoke, other volumes didn't.  Immortality indeed.  Yes.

From JJ Nights

From JJ Nights

From JJ Nights

From JJ Nights

From JJ Nights

From JJ Nights

From JJ Nights

The Night Counter - Alia Younis

 

The Night Counter is a new Nights-related fictional novel written by Alia Younis, who teaches at Zayed University in the UAE.

Book website/author blog:  http://www.aliayunis.com/thebook.html

About the book (from the above site):

"Fatima Abdullah has been alive 85 long years, and she knows when her time will come. In fact, it should come just nine days from tonight, the 992nd nightly visit of the beautiful and immortal Scheherazade.

Each night, Fatima has told Scheherazade her life stories, all the while knowing that on the 1001st night, her storytelling will end forever. But between tonight and night 1001, Fatima has a few loose ends to tie up. She must find a wife for her openly gay grandson, teach Arabic (and birth control) to her 17-year-old great-granddaughter, make amends with her estranged husband, and decide which of her troublesome children should inherit her family's home in Lebanon--a house she herself has not seen in nearly 70 years. All this while under the surveillance of two bumbling FBI agents eager to uncover Al Qaeda in L.A.

Alia Yunis unravels four generations of Abdullah family secrets with a great sense of comic timing and a deft touch of magical realism. Touching on the histories of both the United States and the Middle East over the last one hundred years, this is a love story that crosses five generations with wit and warmth."

And here is a review by student Karina Anne Kabbash: http://kkabbash.blogspot.com/2010/11/night-counter.html

Excerpt from the review:

"Recently, I finished reading a fantastic novel by the name of The Night Counter. The fiction begins on the 992 night of storytelling by Fatima Abdullah, a Lebanese-immigrant-grandmother, to Scheherazade, the immortal storyteller from The Arabian Nights. Over the course of nine days, Fatima shares the stories of her home in Lebanon and of her life in the United States, until the 1001 night, the night her storytelling ends forever. Scheherazade brings Fatima’s stories to life by searching out the characters within them and following them for a day or two. Through Fatima’s tales and Scheherazade’s journeys, the reader is awarded a wonderful glimpse into life of an Arab immigrant to the Untied States and her struggle to reconcile her Arab self within American society, as well as the cultural changes that occur across generations in an Arab-American family."

Eastern Dreams by Paul Nurse, review

My review of Paul Nurse's Eastern Dreams: How the Arabian Nights Came to the World (2010) published by Penguin/Viking Canada is now online at the Journal of Folklore Research.

You can read the review here: http://www.indiana.edu/~jofr/review.php?id=545

Paul Nurse's book has been out for several months now but is limited in its release to primarily Canada, which, given the book's scope and applicability, is too bad. Perhaps future editions will be given a wider distribution. You can, however, buy it from Amazon Canada with your Amazon user ID from the US or anywhere (http://www.amazon.ca/Eastern-Dreams-Paul-Nurse/dp/0670063606/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1288216198&sr=8-1).

HD - The Walls Do Not Fall

Recently came across this subtle reference to the Nights in a poem by HD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilda_Doolittle).

The poem is called "The Walls Do Not Fall" and this is part 5:

When in the company of the gods,
I loved and was loved,

never was my mind stirred
to such rapture,

my heart moved
to such pleasure,

as now, to discover
over Love, a new master:

His, the track in the sand
from a plum-tree in flower

to a half-open hut-door,
(or track would have been,

but wind blows sand-prints from the sand,
whether seen or unseen):

His, the Genius in the jar
which the Fisherman finds,

He is Mage,
bringing myrrh.

Salman Rushdie on "Fictionality"

Here's a brief lecture/interview with Salman Rushdie from Emory University. Rushdie has used the Nights motif and stories in many of his own works and often speaks about the Nights in his many lectures and readings.

In this case, while he backgrounds the Nights in their fictional/story-in-a-story genre, he also makes a point to reference the Nights' origins. This is interesting to me for a number of reasons but namely because of the number of people who "claim" the Nights as "their" own. Here he draws a definitive line from India to Persia (and then to Arabic, he suggests minorly).

I've heard arguments from all three sides (India, Persia/Iran, "Arabic") and they are typically so nationalistic (these stories are from x, y or z). Not sure what to make of it all but it is an interesting and marked topic when the history of the Nights is brought up.

Here Rushdie is clearly marking his territory and his authority by situating the Nights in his own personal "ethnic" background.

The Arabian Nights Murder

This is an old 1936 detective novel featuring the character Dr. Fell. Not sure of the connection to the Nights in particular but it's got a nice looking cover. I haven't read it but here's the plot summary from wikipedia:

"When Scotland Yard detective John Carruthers attends the Wade Museum of Oriental Art, and begins to investigate the interior of one of a series of carriages on exhibit, he is sarcastically told by the night watchman "Watch out when you touch it! There's a dead man inside!" Of course, a dead man tumbles out. The corpse has been stabbed with an elaborate Persian dagger, is wearing an obvious set of false whiskers, and is clutching a cookbook. Gideon Fell must investigate the death and explain all the bizarre circumstances of what was a very busy night at the museum."

And more about the author: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dickson_Carr

And some other covers of the same book:

Taha Hussein - An Egyptian Childhood

Here is an excerpt from Taha Hussein's An Egyptian Childhood with reference to the Nights (one of many references by the author throughout his works, most notably with the 1943 Dreams of Scheherezade).

"So it was in the heart of our friend. He would be a Sufi and practise magic, all the while believing that he was pleasing God and getting our of life the best of its pleasures.

Among the stories brought by the book-pedlars, which were often in the hands of the lads, was one which was an excerpt from The Arabian Nights, and known as the story of Hassan of Basra. This story contained an account of the adventures of a Magician who turned brass into gold, and also an account of that castle which stood behind the mountain on lofty pillars in the air, where-in resided the seven daughters of the Jinn, and whither Hassan of Basra repaired. Then again came the adventures of this man Hassan, telling how he made a long and difficult journey to the abodes of the Jinn. Now among these adventures there was something that filled the lad with admiration, and that was the account of the rod given to this Hassan on one of his journeys, one of the special properties of which was that, if you struck the ground with it, the earth split open and there came forth nine persons to carry out the behests of the possessor of the rod. They were of course Jinn, all-powerful and ethereal, who flew, ran, carried heavy burdens, removed mountains and worked wonders without limit.

The lad was fascinated by this wand, and so greatly desired to get possession of it that he was sleepless at night and perturbed by day. So he began to read books on magic and Sufism and sought among magicians and Sufis for a means of getting hold of it."

(p 51)

Scheherazade in England by Muhsin Jassim Ali

Scheherazade in England: A Study of Nineteenth-Century English Criticism of the Arabian Nights (1981). By Muhsin Jassim Ali, a mini review.

This book attempts to capture the reception of the Nights in England throughout the 18th and 19th centuries and despite its breadth does a good suggestive job at getting the ball rolling on critical studies surrounding the Nights. It is one of the few books about the influence of the Nights in European literature on a general level and one of the few focusing primarily on the critical reception of the Nights particularly.

The book’s (forgivable) failings include a sort of patchwork design that never seems to congeal underneath one clear and specific thesis. This is due, I suspect, to the book’s attempts at such a broad topic but what needs to be better stated is what the main argument is beyond the general notion that the Nights and their versions had individualistic influences on England and Europe. Also despite stating that his goal was to differentiate between the versions of the Nights and how the various critics responded to them at times it seems like it’s uncertain which version is being talked about.

One of the many positive things about the book its insistence that the different versions of the Nights were both reflective of different historical periods and also had different impacts as well. This is a main feature of my own study, just in its beginning stages really, but I’d like to insist that each manifestation of the Nights, from Mahdi to Disney and beyond, has its own unique set or sets of varying elements that are both suggestive of some notion of the past versions of the Nights but also carry with them their own unique sets of influences which have varied throughout history quite dramatically.

Another good point is that most of the focus of the book is on what critics say about the Nights in the pages of the periodicals and books of the time, a focus on evidence like this certainly points to some revealing and more general understandings of what the Nights was seen as at the time. This should though be done with caution as many studies I’ve seen (and even done!) have glossed over the journals themselves, several journals of the 19th century for example were decidedly pro-Burton because of Burton’s affiliation with those journals (or anti-Burton if it were the case), and of course the critics and editors all had their own agendas as well, which needs to be accounted for in any serious study.

Here are some quotes and points I found interesting:

“Excepting Sheila Shaw’s remarks on the value of Galland’s version for eighteenth-century fiction (Muslim World, XLIX [1959], 232-38; PMLA, XC [Jan. 1975], 62-68), there is virtually nothing written on the necessity of classifying and interpreting the impact of and responses to such various editions as those of Galland, Edward William Lane (1838-1841), John Payne (1882-1884), and Richard Burton (1885-1888). Central to my argument is the premise that these translations or redactions reveal much about contemporary predilections, and must be seen as significant signs of the prevailing literary concerns of the times” (6-7).

“Beyond the emphasis on the Nights as a useful repository of information, there was a growing concern to verify this information by a study of the original manuscripts. Perhaps it was no longer entirely safe to trust the Galland version. Accordingly, by the end of the [18th] century, critics and scholars were insisting that fully accurate translations of the tales be undertaken. No sooner was the authenticity of Galland’s version vindicated than Richard Hole and others called for an erudite, well-annotated and scholarly edition of the Nights” (27) - with note 45: “For a discussion of the authenticity of Galland’s version, see Gentleman’s Magazine, LX-VIII (Sept. 1798), 757; LXIV (1794), 784; and Monthly Review, XXIX (1799), 475” (35).

“Rather than revealing a uniform and consistent appreciation of Scheherazade’s aesthetics, a careful reading of nineteenth-century literary responses will indicate diverse and varying estimates and evaluations that form integral parts of the raging literary controversies of the day. Whereas the reading public as well as romantic critics saw in the very enjoyment of these recognizable beauties the sole pupose [sic] of reading, others, especially mid-Victorian critics, devoted a great deal of their time and energy to the study and analysis of the tales from contemporary perspectives” (74).

The Chinese Translations of The Arabian Nights

Rui Zhang, a student at Boston University, has been kind enough to share with the blog her paper on the Chinese versions of the Nights and their variances. Rui recently took a course at BU on the Nights taught by Professor Margaret Litvin.

I've uploaded the paper to Scribd. To read it full screen click the button in the top right corner of the document 'toggle full screen.'

Chinese Translations - Final

Murukami & the Nights

A friend gave me a copy of Haruki Murukami's book Kafka on the Shore which is a great read if you haven't read it or any Murukami. It was a gift because the friend enjoys Murukami (not because of the references below).

The main character (Kafka Tamura) is a teenaged boy in contemporary Japan who, among many other bizarre events, runs away from home and spends time reading all day in a small private library in the suburbs.

Sometimes when you study something you see it everywhere just because you are reading things into things or are trying to fit everything into your thesis (when you study psychology you swear you have all of the mental illnesses you read about or when you read Marx you see everything as a class conflict...! for example).

But what if it really is everywhere?

In Murukami, Kafka begins browsing the library's collection, reflecting in a sense the larger literary points that the narrative weaves:

"When I open them, most of books have the smell of an earlier time leaking out between the pages - a special odor of the knowledge and emotions that for ages have been calmly resting between the covers. Breathing it in, I glance through a few pages before returning each book to its shelf.

Finally I decide on a multivolume set, with beautiful covers, of the Burton translation of The Arabian Nights, pick out one volume, and take it back to the reading room. I've been meaning to read this book" (36).

- Kafka then engages with a character named Oshima and they talk about hermaphrodites (something Burton also brings up several times throughout his Nights) before Kafka returns to his book.

"Back in the reading room I return to 'The Tale of Abu-l-Hasan, the Wag,' but my mind wanders away from the book. Male/male, male/female, and female/female?" (37).

This means that Kafka is reading Burton's volume one of his Supplemental Nights, and no, I'm not that nerdy, I just happen to have read this story yesterday, and yes, it is all strange coincidence.

What is interesting (among many other things) here is that the narrator refers to the story title that is not the Burton title. Burton's title of this story is "The Sleeper and the Waker." In a footnote in his main Nights Burton does mention the story by this exact title but it is in reference to Lane:

"Lane (ii. 352) here introduces, between Nights cclxxi. and ccxc., a tale entitled in the Bresl. Edit. (iv. 134) “The Sleeper and the Waker,” i.e. the sleeper awakened; and he calls it: The Story of Abu-l-Hasan the Wag. It is interesting and founded upon historical-fact; but it can hardly be introduced here without breaking the sequence of The Nights. I regret this the more as Mr. Alexander J. Cotheal-of New York has most obligingly sent me an addition to the Breslau text (iv. 137) from his Ms. But I hope eventually to make use of it."

(this footnote comes in Burton's 271st Night)

I wonder what the case is here, is Murukami being clever by putting the Lane title in the Burton book? Or is it a mistake? If anyone has the original Japanese and can tell me if the title of this story is "The Story of Abu-l-Hasan the Wag" in Murukami's book please let me know, though I can't really see the English translator of Murukami choosing this title if Murukami wrote "The Sleeper and the Waker."

Later, after a few episodes in his own adventure, Kafka returns to the book:

"I head off to the reading room and back to Arabian Nights. Like always, once I settle down and start flipping pages, I can't stop. The Burton edition has all the stories I remember reading as a child, but they're longer, with more episodes and plot twists, and so much more absorbing that it's hard to believe they're the same. They're full of obscene, violent, sexual, basically outrageous scenes. Like the genie in the bottle they have this sort of vital, living sense of play, of freedom, that common sense can't keep bottled up. I love it and can't let go. Compared to those faceless hordes of people rushing through the train station, these crazy, preposterous stories of a thousand years ago are, at least to me, much more real. How that's possible, I don't know. It's pretty weird" (53).

This is a nice passage and one can't help but imagine the author's voice seeping in through his teenaged character giving voice to, on some level, what reading and stories are all about, let alone in the frame of Burton's Nights, especially reading as a teen and/or young adult, moving away from the childish and yet still dragging it with you (or it dragging you) into adulthood and more serious concerns.

There are a few more references (though the whole book is on many levels Murukami's rewrite of what he says Burton's Nights are above):

"I go back to the reading room, where I sink down in the sofa and into the world of The Arabian Nights. Slowly, like a movie fadeout, the real world evaporates. I'm alone, inside the world of the story. My favorite feeling in the world" (54).

Bibliography of Doctoral Dissertations in English on Arabic-Western Literary Relations, 1902-1997

Bibliography of Doctoral Dissertations in English on Arabic-Western Literary Relations, 1902-1997

This list is compiled by the University of Indiana and is a pretty interesting read just to see the sort of angle everyone is taking on the subject of the Arabic/Western literary relationship. Several of the dissertations are Nights related.

Here is the list: http://www.libraries.iub.edu/index.php?pageId=2159

From their website:

"This work lists 433 doctoral dissertations that were written in English on the broadly defined topic of Arabic-Western Literary relations. It attempts to consolidate materials that are otherwise scattered throughout a number of sources. In most cases, the original documents were not reviewed, but every effort was made to be as comprehensive as possible and to verify the accuracy and completeness of each entry. In order to keep the size of the bibliography manageable and its scope and coverage reasonably comprehensive, it was decided to exclude non-English and non-doctoral level theses. In fact, without the development in recent years of online databases that provide reasonably comprehensive coverage of all English language doctoral dissertations, this project would not have been feasible for a single author to undertake in a short time span."

Lyons review/press release? from WSJ

This is a strange and vague article (or press release?) about the Nights from the Wall Street Journal of all places. I'm not sure of the point of it but it does mention the recent English edition from Malcolm Lyons.

As a side note, the author says that Edward Said spends little time on the Nights in Orientalism which is quite a false claim, Said spends most of the first part of his book focusing on Galland, Lane and Burton.

This author also calls Burton's edition "practically unreadable"! (this is what I've heard about it from just about everyone who mentions the Nights and knows about Burton, I suspect that it's one of those tall tales that make their way around and also suspect that many of the people saying this about Burton's edition haven't actually tried to read it)...

He also says: ""The Arabian Nights" has long had a bad reputation among Arab intellectuals for its vulgarity, perceived shallowness and general lack of moral uplift." This is fairly false as well, though it seemed like a true statement in the 10th century, but scholars all over the Middle East are re-interested in the Nights:

entire article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204886304574308744212027048.html

excerpts of the article:

By JAMIE JAMES

It surprises us to learn that Charles Dickens made more allusions to "The Arabian Nights" than any other work of literature—but it shouldn't. Shahrazad, the narrator of "The Arabian Nights' Entertainment," or "Tales of 1001 Nights," has ­inspired great storytellers for centuries. As a treasure-house of characters and stories, the "Nights" is an essential point of reference for popular entertainments ranging from British pantomime to Romantic ballet and opera to Hollywood spectacle.

The key to its lasting popularity and influence is that it's all about the story. The anonymous bards whose tales are collected in the book's thousands of pages espoused no ideology and preached no religious message. Princes play the villain as often as they are praised. The book's pedigree is cosmopolitan, with tales drawn from India and Persia as well as Arabic sources; scholars believe the Aladdin story is actually ­European in ­origin.

..............................................

Reading "The Arabian Nights" is like visiting a medieval lending library. Stories are embedded within stories like Russian dolls, encompassing ­every narrative genre from ­instructive fable to swashbuckling adventure to diaphanously veiled pornography. It wasn't translated into a modern European language until Antoine Galland's French version began to appear in 1704, and then took all Europe by storm. "Read Sinbad and you will be sick of Aeneas," wrote Horace Walpole, ­18th-century England's whimsical tale-spinner and author of the first Gothic novel. (Walpole coined the word "serendipity" from Serendib, the old name for Sri Lanka, to capture the aura of enchantment of the ­island—which he read about in the sixth voyage of Sinbad.)

Until recently, the standard English version was Sir Richard Burton's practically unreadable translation of 1885. Thus in the 20th century "The Arabian Nights" became best-known in simplified adventure stories for children. Adults imbibed Shahrazad's tales in a stream of popular adaptations in every conceivable medium and genre.

To restore this classic page-turner to the world's reading list, last year Penguin in London published a captivating new translation by Malcolm Lyons in a magnificent three-volume set. Penguin USA is planning to bring out a one-volume paperback abridgment of the Lyons ­translation.

For all its bizarre monsters and miraculous goings-on, the world of "The Arabian Nights" is instantly recognizable as our own. At the conclusion of each of his perilous voyages, Sinbad rejoices at his return to ­Baghdad, where he eats home cooking and drinks good wine with his boon companions. The perspective is populist and secular: The protagonists of most of the tales aren't great princes but wily merchants and clever young laborers. Religion plays a smaller role in "The Arabian Nights" than it does in medieval Christian epics; its characters rarely pray except when in a jam. Women ­frequently play the hero, rescuing their hapless aristocratic masters with cunning stratagems.

"The Arabian Nights" has long had a bad reputation among Arab intellectuals for its vulgarity, perceived shallowness and general lack of moral uplift. Yet the tales capture an essential quality of the Arab soul: passionate self-romancing. Edward Said's influential book "Orientalism" (1978) warns modern readers to be skeptical of falsely ­romantic views of the East propagated by Western writers and painters. He scarcely mentions "The Arabian Nights," possibly because it undermines his basic premise; but no Western view of the East, however fanciful, could possibly exceed it for perfumed glamour. The most seductive quality of the stories is Shahrazad's serene conviction that her audience will follow her anywhere. And we do.

—Mr. James is the author of "The Snake Charmer" ­(Hyperion 2008).

Mark Twain's Huckleberry FInn

(from chap xxiii) - among many Twain references to the Nights:

'My, you ought to seen old Henry the Eight when he was in bloom. He was a blossom. He used to marry a new wife every day, and chop off her head next morning. And he would do it just as indifferent as if he was ordering up eggs. 'Fetch up Nell Gwynn,' he says. They fetch her up. Next morning, 'Chop off her head!' And they chop it off. 'Fetch up Jane Shore,' he says; and up she comes. Next morning, 'Chop off her head' - and they chop it off. 'Ring up Fair Rosamun.' Fair Rosamun answers the bell. Next morning, 'Chop off her head.' And he made every one of them tell him a tale every night; and he kept that up till he had hogged a thousand and one tales that way, and then he put them all in a book, and called it Domesday Book - which was a good name and stated the case. You don't know kings, Jim, but I know them; and this old rip of ourn is one of the cleanest I've struck in history. Well, Henry he takes a notion he wants to get up some trouble with this country. How does he go at it - give notice? - give the country a show? No. All of a sudden he heaves all the tea in Boston Harbor overboard, and whacks out a declaration of independence, and dares them to come on. That was his style - he never give anybody a chance. He had suspicions of his father, the Duke of Wellington. Well, what did he do? - ask him to show up? No - drownded him in a butt of mamsey, like a cat. Spose people left money laying around where he was - what did he do? He collared it. Spose he contracted to do a thing; and you paid him, and didn't set down there and see that he done it - what did he do? He always done the other thing. Spose he opened his mouth - what then? If he didn't shut it up powerful quick, he'd lose a lie, every time. That's the kind of a bug Henry was....

All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take them all around, they're a mighty ornery lot. It's the way they're raised.'

Alia Yunis - The Night Counter

Alia Yunis retells the 1001 Nights frame story in The Night Counter, her first novel, and from the review it seems she got into the psychology of Scheherazade's tales and their therapeutic benefits.

Here is the author's website: http://aliayunis.com/thebook.html

and a good review from the Star Tribune online: http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/books/52617702.html?page=1&c=y

here is the review, for the full page visit the link above:

1,001 nights with modern family twist

By KATHRYN KYSAR, Special to the Star Tribune

Last update: August 8, 2009 - 10:15 PM

Had your fill of trashy novels, plot-driven candies hastily devoured at the cabin or beach? "The Night Counter," Alia Yunis' first novel, mixes equal parts of magical realism, social commentary, family drama and lighthearted humor to create a delicious and intriguing indulgence worth savoring.

The story's central character is Fatima Abdullah, an 85-year-old Lebanese immigrant who raised 10 children in Detroit before she left her stoic husband to live with her gay actor grandson in Los Angeles. Yunis adds a dash of magic: Scheherazade, the mythical storyteller, appears to Fatima, requiring a story from her for 1,001 nights, after which Fatima will die. Then Yunis thickens the plot: Having run out of childhood reminiscences with nine nights to go, Fatima prepares for her impending death.

As she agonizes over which children should receive her treasures, she finally shares with the immortal Scheherazade the stories of her complex children, who include an alcoholic Harvard cabdriver who marries on first dates, a Texan housewife struggling to erase her ethnicity and an Internet matchmaker unlucky at love. By day, Scheherazade flies (on her magic carpet, of course) to observe the offspring, weaving Fatima's laments into a complete and compelling tale.

But the book is far more than a fantastic family story. Yunis masterfully adds not only classical literature references, most prominently "The Arabian Nights," but she also delivers a searing yet humorous commentary about the difficulties confronting Arab-Americans living in the post-9/11 United States. She presents the reader with a catalog of clichés -- such as faux-Middle Eastern belly dancers in Vegas and a hippie fortuneteller with a fake crystal ball -- and challenges her readers to rethink these stereotypes as the characters' personal crises mirror larger geo-political events.

The book and Yunis both have Minnesota origins: The novel began as a short story that was published in Mizna, a local literary magazine that focuses on writing by Arab-Americans, and Yunis spent part of her childhood in the Twin Cities. The narrative, which travels around the United States, includes a comical stop at the University of Minnesota.

After stirring in two bumbling FBI agents to bring the conflict to a boil, Yunis ultimately takes the reader on a behind-the-scenes-tour of Arab America while teaching that family obligations can sometimes blossom into meaningful love. Heartwarming, silly and sometimes scathingly accurate, the novel is a perfect choice for book clubs. Read with a side of Fatima's hummus; the recipe is available on the author's blog, aliayunis.com/.

Kathryn Kysar is a poet, anthologist and professor who lives in St. Paul.

dissertations on the nights

A cursory search via ProQuest brings up the following dissertations and abstracts based on the Nights:

(Sandra Naddaff's has been turned into her great book on the Nights):

"ARABESQUE: NARRATIVE STRUCTURE AND THE AESTHETICS OF REPETITION IN THE "1001 NIGHTS" CYCLE OF "THE PORTER AND THE THREE LADIES OF BAGHDAD"
by NADDAFF, SANDRA ANN, Ph.D., Harvard University, 1983 , 215 pages; AAT 8403028
Abstract (Summary)

The present study limits itself to an examination of the narrative strategies and structures within one cycle of the 1001 Nights. The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad is present in a relatively stable form in all recensions of the 1001 Nights and is among the most intricate of its narratives. Like the other narratively generated cycles within the work, The Porter and the Three Ladies consists of a frame story within which unfold the tales of its main characters. Story-telling, then, is the main activity of the cycle, indeed the only activity which has value within this narrative universe. In this, the cycle mirrors the original frame story of the larger embedding work. In both narrative and thematic terms, the cycle speaks of the tale of Shahrazad, details in miniature fashion the larger narrative issues sketched before the first of the 1001 nights begins. The narrative concerns and tendencies which it exhibits are correspondingly significant.

It is the aim of this work to isolate and explain these concerns and tendencies. Arabesque had its genesis in an effort to define the basic narrative development of this particular cycle, to understand why The Porter and the Three Ladies moves in a manner so radically different from that of more conventional narratives. The further reaches of such an examination encompass the function of metaphor as a generative trope in narrative. From an analysis of the status of metaphor within this narrative, the study moves to an examination of the function of repetition as a mode of narrative discourse, and, further, to a close reading of the specific workings of narrative repetition on the level of both story and discourse in the cycle. The final chapter of the study interprets these narrative strategies in the light of the development of the Islamic ornament of arabesque, attempts to define the narrative equivalent of arabesque. In so doing, it hopes to offer a broader theoretical context within which the kind of narrative structure and discourse defined by the cycle of The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad can be read."



"Roots of oral tradition in "The Arabian Nights": An application of oral performance theory to "The story of the King of China's Hunchback"
by Mahir, Zaid Numan, M.A., University of Missouri - Columbia, 2007 , 116 pages; AAT 1459768
Abstract (Summary)

The aim of this thesis is to argue for The Arabian Nights as a work of verbal art whose roots are in the oral tradition of the Arab world. After a short premise meant to throw light on the status of oral storytelling in the Arab world, the thesis is divided into three chapters. The first is devoted to laying out a theoretical background for the application of an oral tradition approach. Chapters Two and Three are given to the application of this approach: Richard Bauman's Oral Performance framework. The text chosen for this application is the "Story of the King of China's Hunchback." The conclusions I draw afterwards are based on the illuminating results of the theory put to practice."

"Scheherazade reborn in the contemporary Francophone fiction of Leila Sebbar, Pierre Karch and Vinciane Moeschler
by DeVille, Jennifer Suzanne, Ph.D., The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2006 , 184 pages; AAT 3219122
Abstract (Summary)

Since the mid-1980s, Francophone authors from both the Eastern and Western worlds have displayed a renewed interest in Scheherazade, the legendary storyteller of Les Mille et Une Nuits. This rediscovery of Scheherazade, particularly in the postcolonial context, serves as a vehicle for refuting hegemonic and patriarchal domination. As a multicultural figure, Scheherazade also functions as a means through which sexuality and maternity can be redefined. Furthermore, Scheherazade's recent renown is inextricably linked to the impact of globalization and multiculturalism in the information age, wherein the emblem of the empowered literary and political icon is available to all, regardless of race, gender, or geographical location.

The title character in each of the primary sources I examine in this dissertation is overtly named after Scheherazade. Although these primary works share a common namesake, however, the cultural, religious, ethnic and ethical values relating to the women within them vary considerably. The five novels and four short stories in which the Scheherazade figures appear were written over a span of twenty-one years, by both male and female authors from Algeria/France, Canada, and Switzerland.

In Leïla Sebbar's seven Shérazade works, the Scheherazade figure is an educated, powerful and defiant Beur runaway who is the quintessential anti-odalisque. Shérazade overcomes death and rape, ultimately becoming a mother-figure in contemporary Algeria. In Le Nombril de Scheherazade, Pierre Karch reinvents Scheherazade as a pseudo-transvestite storyteller in the Bahamas. Karch's abundant use of parody forces the reader to question the cultural construct of gender while simultaneously calling attention to dysfunctional family dynamics. In the case of Vinciane Moeschler's Schéhérazade, ma folie, both parodic Scheherazade figures succumb to languor, dependency and despondency. By presenting two ill-fated narratives of excess, one in Medieval Baghdad and another in contemporary Algiers and Brussels, Moeschler offers a diachronic reproachment of female hypersexuality and Western misperceptions of the East. In addition to subverting Orientalist stereotypes of Scheherazade, Sebbar, Karch and Moeschler refute the binary opposition between sexuality and maternity, thereby proffering a redefinition of women's voice, power and identity in the twenty-first century."

"The Spanish Shahrazad and her entourage: The powers of storytelling women in "Libro de los enganos de las mujeres"
by Hancock, Zennia Desiree, Ph.D., University of Maryland, College Park, 2004 , 263 pages; AAT 3153133
Abstract (Summary)

The anonymous Libro de los engaños e asayamientos de las mugeres (LEM) is a collection of exempla consisting of a frame tale and twenty-three interpolated tales. It forms part of the Seven Sages/Sindibad cycle, shares source material with the Arabic Alf layla wa layla (A Thousand and One Nights) , and was ordered translated from Arabic into Romance by Prince Fadrique of Castile in 1253. In the text, females may be seen as presented according to the traditional archetypes of Eve and the Virgin Mary; however, the ambivalence of the work allows that it be interpreted as both misogynous and not, which complicates the straightforward designation of its female characters as "good" and "bad." Given this, the topos of Eva/Ave as it applies to this text is re-evaluated.

The reassessment is effected by exploring the theme of ambivalence and by considering the female characters as hybrids of both western and eastern tradition. The primary female character of the text, dubbed the "Spanish Shahrazad," along with other storytelling women in the interpolated tales, are proven to transcend binary paradigms through their intellect, which cannot be said to be inherently either good or evil, and which is expressed through speech acts and performances.

Chapter I reviews the historical background of Alfonsine Spain and the social conditions of medieval women, and discusses the portrayal of females in literature, while Chapter II focuses on the history of the exempla, LEM , and critical approaches to the text, and then identifies Bakhtin's theory of the carnivalesque and Judith Butler's speech act theory of injurious language as appropriate methodologies, explaining how both are nuanced by feminist perspectives. A close reading of the text demonstrates how it may be interpreted as a misogynous work. Chapter III applies the theoretical tools in order to problematise the misogynous reading of the text and to demonstrate the agency of its female speaker-performers; the analysis centres on the Spanish Shahrazad, who represents a female subjectivity that transcends binary depictions of women and represents a holistic ideal of existence that is reflected in the calculated, harmonized use of both her intellect and corporeality."

"THE FRAME-NARRATIVE AND SHORT FICTION: A CONTINUUM FROM "ONE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS" TO BORGES (JORGE LUIS BORGES, ARGENTINA)
by MORSY, FATEN I., Ph.D., University of Essex (United Kingdom), 1989 , 236 pages; AAT D-89972
Abstract (Summary)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF.

This thesis attempts a study of the framing device in Western short fiction as a continuity from 1001 Nights to Borges. By analysing some of the stories in the selected texts, the use of frame casts light on the relationship between Medieval entertaining function of fiction and the modern tradition of reflexive fiction.

Part I briefly defines some critical and theoretical concepts as a background against which the works at hand will be studied. Of these I single out the concept of literary history and the idea of cultural frontiers in which I point out as precisely as possible the relevance of these major issues to the overall purposes of the thesis.

Part II which is divided into 4 chapters, deals with the frame-narrative tradition in the Middle Ages. I start by a discussion of 1001 Nights emphasising its position both within its Arabic literary tradition and in Western European literature. The rest of the part is concerned with the shadow cast by 1001 Nights. Chapter 4 considers the frame-narrative device in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Decameron of Boccaccio, while in Chapter 5 a discussion of some of the novellas shows that both writers wrote stories that had entertainment as their main intention.

Part III is divided into two chapters which consider Las Novelas Ejemplares and Don Quixote respectively. The discussion of some of the novellas in the first collection and the analysis of a number of episodes in Don Quixote, are intended to show that Cervantes's work stands at an important junction in the historical development of the novella. Although Cervantes breaks away with the conventional frame-narrative tradition, he handles the frame so successfully that it becomes a prominent device in his "reflexive fiction".

The last part is devoted to the discussion of Borges's Ficciones which brings into focus the above considerations through an attempted analysis of some of his fictional pieces. While Chapter 8 examines some of the framing devices used by Borges, the last chapter looks at Borges's use of the "labyrinth"--which finds wide repercussions in the formal organization of the earlier novella collections--as his most appropriate definition for both the world and his fiction."

""A Thousand and One Nights" and the construction of Islam in the western imagination
by Oliver, Martyn Allebach, Ph.D., Boston University, 2009 , 309 pages; AAT 3348614
Abstract (Summary)

This dissertation examines the influence of the text popularly known as the Arabian Nights , introduced to Europe in 1704, in the development of Western representations of Islam and Muslims. It argues that the Nights , though neither a "religious" text nor overtly concerned with religious questions, had an extensive impact on how modern Western authors and readers depicted and imagined Islam. In the course of this analysis of the development of the Nights as an object of the Western imagination, "religion" as an object of academic inquiry is problematized, the concept of "Islam" in Western discourse is historically contextualized, and the relationship between religion and literature is examined.

Islam in the Nights exists as an assumed cultural constant. It is never explicitly described or explained, but operates instead as the religious context within which the action of the many interlocking stories occurs. The text depicts Islam in terms of what is now called "lived religion," the everyday practices of ordinary Muslims. There are, however, two complicating factors to this representation. First, many stories in the Nights involve supernatural events. Because the Nights was one of the first widely read literary objects from the Muslim world, Islam and the fantastic became intimately associated. Second, the translators of the Nights , in accordance with their individual opinions or professional aims, annotated their editions with a wide array of religious, cultural, and historical anecdotes. These notes both sought to explain Islam to the readers of the Nights and contributed to the development of a critical anthropology of Islam and the "Orient."

In this confluence of factors, the representation of Islam that emerged from Western renderings of the Nights was a study in contradiction: rational and irrational, sexually licentious and repressive, violent and forgiving. In conclusion, the developing image of Islam in the West parallels the development of Western self-identity. As the Nights was recast and retranslated, it mirrored and reinforced European and American ideas about themselves. This process of definition is ongoing, and the Nights continues to play a role in that story."

"Stories without end: A reexamination of Victorian suspense
by Murfin, Audrey Dean, Ph.D., State University of New York at Binghamton, 2008 , 215 pages; AAT 3339400
Abstract (Summary)

Suspense is a central preoccupation of Victorian literature, but it has been under-theorized. Unlike work that argues that suspense does the work of Victorian empiricism, "Stories without End" argues that by borrowing structures from popular culture, suspense undermines and challenges empiricism. This challenge to objective representation and the Victorian realist project occurs even in texts that are purportedly realistic. Instead, suspense insists on indeterminacy and open-ended meta-fictionality. My project explores structural devices and the cultural and literary-historical influences from which they are drawn. My first chapter studies how the linked stories modeled after the Arabian Nights , which defined much British short fiction, denied closure to readers. The second examines how the influence of Gothic texts expressed skepticism about realism even within realist novels. In my third chapter I demonstrate that the inclusion of newspaper structures in the novel challenged the narrative objectivity and reliability of even non-fiction reporting. Finally, my project concludes by considering the protests of popular writer and realist Arthur Morrison who maintained that the realist method was morally superior. By questioning the often arbitrary fault lines between high and low traditions, "Stories without End" advances scholarship on suspense by arguing that repeatedly through the Victorian period, literature and popular culture intersected in a manner that expressed significant doubt about the possibility of any real comprehension, or representation, of the world."

"Folk narrative in the nineteenth-century British novel
by Greenlee, Jessica, Ph.D., University of Oregon, 2006 , 228 pages; AAT 3251852
Abstract (Summary)

Nineteenth-century British authors frequently made use of popular narratives in their novels, often retelling fairy tales, ballads, and myths. Many of these narratives were well known due not only to oral transmission but also to printed chapbooks, broadsides, and pantomimes. This dissertation examines the way Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, and Charlotte Brontë used such narratives together with common traditional topoi to examine social issues of the day: gender-relations, the coming of the industrialized modern age, the changing of values, and the way institution, law, and tradition were applied to social problems. The focus is on Dickens's Bleak House , Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles , and Brontë's Jane Eyre , with reference to other works by each author. The narratives retold in these novels include fairy tales such as "Bluebeard," "Cinderella," "Beauty and the Beast," and "Sleeping Beauty," and tales from The Arabian Nights as well as ballads such as "Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight" and "The Spotted Cow," and a host of songs about milkmaids. Myths include that of Demeter and Persephone, the Genesis account of the Creation and Fall of man, the biblical story of Esther, and the Arthurian legends.

The authors' views of the traditions in the tales varied. Brontë saw folk narratives as providing alternative ways of seeing the world and women's place in it and includes radical revisions of several fairy tales in Jane Eyre . The more conservative Dickens used fairy tales to reinforce the doctrine of separate spheres. Hardy saw folk narratives as representing a way of believing and living that was being squeezed out and made no longer relevant by the modern world. Tess's life follows the trajectory of milkmaid ballad and mythical goddess, but Hardy chooses forms of the narratives that are focused on death rather than life and renewal. In each case, common ground created by the use of traditional narratives provided a stable foundation on which to build theories and works of literary art that remain meaningful to this day."

"Literary modernity before novel and nation: Transaction and circulation between nineteenth-century Arabic, Persian and English literatures
by Rastegar, Kamran D., Ph.D., Columbia University, 2005 , 253 pages; AAT 3174877
Abstract (Summary)

To read nineteenth-century Arabic, Persian and English literary works has often meant to value these texts in accordance with their assimilation into the trajectories of novelistic writing and nationalist discourse: a predicament here termed the nationalist-novelist paradigm of literary historiography. In opposition to this limiting paradigm, it is the thesis of this dissertation that: (1) the appearance of contingent literary modernities may be identified within transactional texts--texts engendered through and emergent from travel or other intercultural contacts, or through the translation and circulation, and (2) these texts emerge from transformations in the social function for literature in these societies, and from the inter-linguistic circulation of literary texts among regional non-European languages and between these languages and European languages. The effect of these may be termed--with reference to Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital--the emergence of an autonomous field of literary production; a field no longer deriving legitimacy from sacred or theological utility, nor from accordance to a sovereign's pleasure, but from an entirely self-sufficient system of values and legitimization.

The production of Alf Layla wa Layla/Arabian Nights/Hizar a Yik Shab , emerges from a constellation of textual transactions, enabled through colonial institutions, to circulate within French and English readerships (themselves rife with anxieties over the value of the text) and "return" to its "source"--be that of Arab or Persian origin--to legitimize the emergence of autonomous fields of Arabic and Persian literary production. Similarly, the fictional travel narratives of James Morier ( Hajji Baba Ispahani ), Muhammad al-Muwaylih[dotbelow]i ( Fitra min al-Zaman: H[dotbelow]adith `Isa ibn Hisham ), Zayn al-Abedin Maraghih'i ( Safarnamih-yi Ibrahim Bayk ), and the travelogues of Haji Sayyah[dotbelow], Rifa'at Rifaa' al-T[dotbelow]aht[dotbelow]awi, and Mirza Salih[dotbelow] Shirazi, show how textual transactions enabled investigations into the nature of subjectivity and the institutions making up society, signaling the increasing autonomy of the act of writing, and reading. Ah[dotbelow]mad Faris al-Shidyaq's al-Saq `ala al-Saq makes innovative use of the print-book form as a literary response to the challenges to static religious, social and cultural identities, presenting a critical if irresolute literary imagination irresolvable within nationalist-novelist readings of the literary history of the period."

"Orientalism in translation: The one thousand and one nights in 18th century France and 19th century England
by Bouagada, Habib, M.A., University of Ottawa (Canada), 2005 , 120 pages; AAT MR11223
Abstract (Summary)

The objective of this study is to show how translation contributes to the "Orientalist" project and to the past and present knowledge of the Orient as it has been shaped by different disciplines such as anthropology, history and literature. In order to demonstrate this, I have decided to compare the Arabic text Alf Leyla wa Leyla (The One Thousand and One Nights) with the French translation by Antoine Galland (1704-1706) and the English translation by Sir Richard Burton (1885).

According to Edward Said, the Orientalist project or Orientalism is mainly a French and British cultural enterprise that has produced a wide-ranging wealth of knowledge about an Orient that has been represented as an undifferenciated entity with despotism, splendour, cruelty, or even sensuality being its main attributes.

I have chosen these translations because they come from places with a long Orientalist tradition. In 18 th century France, the age of the Belles infidèles , Galland is a man of the Enlightenment who appears to be a precursor of Orientalism as embodied in Montesquieu's Lettres persanes and Votaire's zadig . A century later, Burton's The Arabian Nights , backed by a deep knowledge of Islam, is published. Burton is an official in the service of the British Empire---an empire that takes pride in having the highest number of Muslim subjects.

The evolution of Alf Leyla wa Leyla and its translations is followed by an analysis of the shifts applied to the representations of Oriental elements found in it (social and religious practices). These shifts as well as the annotations that refer to Arabo-Islamic culture are related to Galland and Burton's intellectual development and to the socio-historical context of their respective translations."

"Mirrors of ink and wonderful lamps: The "Arabian Nights" in Victorian and postmodern literature
by Parreiras-Horta, Luis Paulo, Ph.D., University of Toronto (Canada), 2004 , 286 pages; AAT NQ94324
Abstract (Summary)

Recent scholarship has attributed the popularity of the Arabian Nights tales in the Arabic-speaking world to the fulfillment of expectations of worldly justice and reward rather than to the presence of magic. In contrast, this study finds that the tales' reception in late-imperial and postmodern English letters is governed by a disregard for their possible ethical and historical claims. This unmooring of the practice of translation from notions of fidelity and authenticity is precisely what attracted the postmodern writers Barth and Rushdie to the Pre-Raphaelite and Decadent texts of FitzGerald and Burton.

This study first situates Victorian translations of the Nights and Khayyam's Rubaiyat with recourse to previously unknown sources, including letters exchanged between the various translators and Pre-Raphaelite and Decadent poets and the 'foul papers' for Burton's Nights . This evidence suggests Lane alone among the translators was attentive to the claims of history and ethics on his material, while FitzGerald, Payne and Burton preferred Pre-Raphaelite and Decadent methods of translation that privileged sound over sense. Yet even Lane's notes to the Nights , which had informed Thomas Carlyle and George Eliot's respective interests in Islam and the occult, would later be gutted to suit the imperialist sentiment that accompanied Britain's invasion of Egypt in 1882. This reception attests to the power of Western institutions to reshape Eastern texts as foreseen by Said in Orientalism .

However, current postcolonial scholarship is less useful in understanding Burton and FitzGerald's influence on Barth and Rushdie. Barth's seminal postmodern prose and Rushdie's early postcolonial musings date to the sixties and mid seventies when reissues of Burton and FitzGerald's Eastern translations were in vogue in counter-cultural circles. In his prose Barth sought to rewrite Burton's notes rather than the original tales, and Rushdie privileged FitzGerald's Khayyam as exemplary of a positive conception of the migrant or 'translated man.' The influence of Said's Orientalism would prompt both writers to be more self-conscious about their use of Victorian translations of Eastern texts, but they would not altogether forsake a constructive engagement with this Victorian tradition in The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor and The Satanic Verses ."

"Orientalism and Romanticism: A historical dialectical relationship
by Abdelwahed, Said Ibrahim, Ph.D., Duquesne University, 1992 , 324 pages; AAT 9300159
Abstract (Summary)

This study is about the relationship between Orientalism and Romanticism. Chapter one reviews the cultural and economic dimensions of Orientalism and develops a historical strategy for investigating the Western portrayal of the Semitic East from the Crusades to the twentieth century.

Chapter two examines Orientalist ideas in major Romantic poems. These poems are Wordsworth's "Book V" of The Prelude, Byron's "Canto V" of Don Juan, Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Keats' The Eve of St. Agnes, and Scott's "The Crusader Returned." Wordsworth is believed to have read the pre-Islamic Arabic epics, and the Arabian Nights. His admiration of the Arabian Nights derived from its uniqueness and non-Western "spicy" atmosphere, its exoticism, and exceptional flavor. Byron is a prominent Orientalist Romantic poet who often portrays Middle Eastern culture in a negative light. Coleridge is believed to have plagiarized ideas and images from the Arabian Nights. Keats' imagination is drawn to the Middle East as a cheap source of poetic material and a good market place for English industrial production. Scott reconstructs Europe's Medieval past and undermines Islamic culture.

Chapter three studies various Middle Eastern images portrayed in some Romantic novels. The novels studied are Beckford's Vathek, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and Scott's The Betrothed and Count Robert of Paris. Beckford lays the foundation stone for a new phase of Orientalism--Romantic Orientalism. In Frankenstein, Shelley proves a clear misunderstanding of the culture of the Middle East and she underestimates the value of the Muslim woman whose image she has taken from Percy Bysshe Shelley's Alastor. Moreover, Mary Shelley reflects Byronic ideas about the Middle East. Scott reconstructs Europe's history to revive racist ideas--common in the Middle Ages--of the Semitic East.

This study shows that when Romanticism as a literary movement came to life and flourished, Orientalism as a comprehensive European movement was mature and well established; it exerted an insurmountable influence over Romantic writers inside and outside England. The mutual admiration, love, respect and affinity between Romanticism and Orientalism make it impossible to study either of these two historical movements separately, as they have been thoroughly integrated into a historical dialectical relationship."

""Arabian Nights": Its background, its development as an original play, and the influence of the "Nights" on English literature and drama. (with Original writing);
by Hassan, Kaied Filfil, Ph.D., Texas Tech University, 1991 , 141 pages; AAT 9217278
Abstract (Summary)

In the Arabic and Islamic culture there is the legend Alf Layla Wa Layla, "The Thousand and One Nights," or the Arabian Nights Entertainments, the title usually used in English to refer to a group of tales that are adapted and formalized by storytellers. For hundreds of years these stories were handed down orally from generation to generation by the storytellers of the Arabs and Persians.

The rich imaginative power of the Nights has kept their hold on European imagination since its first translation in the opening of the eighteenth century to this day. The Arabian Nights' stories exercised an influence on English writing, particularly on drama and romantic fiction, making a profound impression that led to a series of imitations and adaptations. Through variations upon its plots and characters, the Nights has produced different exciting tales. Since the main function of drama is to tell a story, these stories could be a treasure for writing and dramatizing works for the stage.

The main portion of this dissertation is the text of an original play Arabian Nights, adapted and dramatized from some of these stories."

"A Victorian "Arabian Nights" adventure: A study in intertextuality
by Workman, Nancy Victoria, Ph.D., Loyola University of Chicago, 1989 , 293 pages; AAT 8912722
Abstract (Summary)

This study examines the referential relationship, or intertextuality, that exists between selected Victorian texts and a collection of medieval fairy tales, the Arabian Nights or The Thousand and One Nights. It argues that many Victorian writers used the imagery, themes, and narrative structures from this collection in their own work, and that a recognition of this relationship enriches the reader's understanding of individual texts, as well as the manner by which texts create "literary language" as they borrow and refer to one another.

To establish these relationships, chapter one discusses the "text" of the Arabian Nights and problems of critical inquiry regarding intertextuality. It establishes the rationale for using biographical information to corroborate textual evidence of citation, and it challenges the position on intertextuality advanced by Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes. Relying on a critical methodology suggested by Laurent Jenny in "The Strategy of Form," the dissertation examines representative types of intertextual relationships.

For example, chapter two analyzes how Charles Dickens used frequent allusions to the Nights in all his work. The allusions follow recognizable patterns and evoke one of the main themes in the collection, the power of storytelling to ransom the imaginative self from extinction. Chapter three addresses how two major poets of the era, Christina Rossetti and William Morris, used stories from the Nights as the source material from which they wrote their own adaptations. Rossetti took two long narrative poems which she condensed into her own short "The Dead City," whereas Morris greatly expanded a short story into "The Man Who Never Laughed Again," a selection from The Earthly Paradise. Chapter four demonstrates how Charlotte Bronte used subtexts from the Nights in creating her Angrian saga and her later mature work, Jane Eyre. Finally, chapter five examines George Meredith's The Shaving of Shagpat, a book length imitation of the Nights which borrows many fictional elements from the earlier work. Each chapter emphasizes how Victorian writing is permeated with the sounds and textures of Eastern contributions."

"THE INFLUENCE OF THE "ARABIAN NIGHTS" UPON NINETEENTH CENTURY ENGLISH FICTION
by SHELTAG, HUSSEIN ABDUL-AZIM, Ph.D., University of Exeter (United Kingdom), 1989 , 242 pages; AAT DX89311
Abstract (Summary)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library.

Throughout history there have been interactions between England and the East. These connections were probably at their most extensive in the nineteenth century. The origins of these links are to be found in the First Crusade of 1096. The opportunities created by the crusaders permitted a mutual development of commercial links, political allegiances and literary communications. The first of these literary connections were the stories of the Arabian Nights heard by the crusaders and then recounted orally on their return to Europe. These tales soon penetrated into the popular literature of France and England. Thus, Giovanni Boccaccio is reputed to have incorporated ideas from these tales in his Decameron, and Geoffrey Chaucer's The Squire's Tale also contains close parallels with some Arabian tales.

The Elizabethan era witnessed a new direction in the relationship between England and the East. This was largely due to the general climate of the Renaissance, which encouraged new trade routes, exploration and colonization. There was a political purpose attached to the establishment of new trade routes and contacts. This is reflected in the founding of the Levant Company in 1581, which opened new channels of information for traders, scholars, diplomats and official envoys. These interests combined to extend the sphere of English foreign policy, and had the associated effect of arousing great curiosity in England about the East. It also initiated several works concerning the Eastern peoples. These included Richard Knolles' The General History of the Turks and William Painter's Palace of Pleasure, both of which acquired immense popularity and became major sources of information on the East. They were a particularly useful source of material for the Elizabethan dramatists. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)"

"Shahrazade's wake: The "Arabian Nights" and the narrative dynamics of Charles Dickens and James Joyce
by Power, Henriette Lazaridis, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1988 , 295 pages; AAT 8816216
Abstract (Summary)

Dickens and Joyce follow in the wake of Shahrazade, retracing and reviving the structures of her Arabian Nights tales. They also conduct a wake for this female storyteller, warding off the ghosts of her narration. As wakers of the Nights, Dickens and Joyce adopt a dual stance towards that Persian text: they change what they intend to repeat, and challenge the ghosts they pretend to revere. In their retelling of the Nights, Dickens and Joyce reveal their differing conceptions of the power of the reader and the female teller in the production of narrative.

The Arabian Nights is known as the text of Shahrazade's life-saving narration. But more important to Dickens and Joyce is the text's representation of gender and gesture. Shahrazade's subversion of the King's sexual and verbal power results from her digressive storytelling, and from her gestured narration of the tales for her sister; as the King watches, he becomes a voyeur whose power is compromised. Gender, gesture, and voyeurism are also significant to the pantomime versions of the Nights which Dickens and Joyce see as part of its text. In the spoken and the staged Nights, narrative becomes an exchange of power between male and female, word and body.

The first two chapters concern the treatment of the female storyteller in a range of Dickens' texts and in Joyce's later works. Dickens figures the female teller as a rival whose text must be silenced or coded by the narrator as inferior to Dickens' own. Joyce, however, uses what he represents as a female grammar to suspend the articulation of his text into coded meanings. Following an analysis of the pantomime, the last two chapters discuss Joyce's use of gestural language and voyeurism to involve the reader in the production of the text, and Dickens' use of the same elements in order to control the reader's interpretation.

This analysis of the borrowing and burying of the Nights enables a re-evaluation of the two writers' narrative dynamics: Joyce's work requires the reader it appears to alienate, while Dickens' minimizes the reader he seems to court."

"STYLISTIC FEATURES IN SELECTED TALES FROM "THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS" ("THE ARABIAN NIGHTS", "ALF LAYLAH WA-LAYLAH")
by PINAULT, DAVID, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1986 , 435 pages; AAT 8614849
Abstract (Summary)

This dissertation comprises a literary analysis of selected tales from the Alf laylah wa-laylah (The Thousand and One Nights), in which I collate texts from the nineteenth-century editions of MacNaghten (Calcutta II) and Bulaq and compare these two editions with the recently published Galland MS (BN 3609-3611), which has been edited by Muhsin Mahdi. I address the hitherto largely neglected area of "microstructural" analysis of the Alf laylah by attempting a line-by-line examination of the Arabic text of several tales from the collection, with the end in mind of defining and cataloguing characteristic stylistic techniques used by various redactors. As I compare differing versions of given stories, I coin terms (such as "repetitive designation" and "dramatic visualization") to describe these techniques as they are variously employed in Bulaq, MacNaghten and Galland.

In collating the three Arabic editions I found that they frequently diverge very sharply from each other in the staging of scenes within a given tale; furthermore, no one edition is consistently superior to another in its display of literary craftsmanship. Thus, for example, the Galland MS's version of the Scheherazade story shows better plot structure than the version found in Bulaq or MacNaghten; while the latter two texts are much more carefully developed thematically than G in those passages which comprise the inner frame of "The Tale of the First Lady" and are more coherent in their use of descriptive detail in important scenes from "The Two Viziers." On the basis of such findings I take issuse with the view expressed by Mahdi in his edition of the Galland MS, where he dismisses Bulaq and MacNaghten as abridged and inferior versions of Galland; for in some stories Bulaq and MacNaghten offer readings which are fuller and better crafted than Galland's. One can appreciate stylistic differences among the three editions only when one abandons sweeping critical generalizations and engages with the text in a process of close reading; for comparison of Bulaq, MacNaghten, and Galland on an individualized story-by-story basis demonstrates that the literary quality of the Alf laylah collection varies widely from tale to tale even within a single given edition."

"Nineteenth-century English criticism of the Arabian Nights
by Ali, Muhsin Jassim, Ph.D., Dalhousie University (Canada), 1978; AAT NK38370"

"THE INFLUENCE OF THE 'ARABIAN NIGHTS' ON EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO 'ROBINSON CRUSOE' AND 'GULLIVER'S TRAVELS'
by SHAW, SHEILA G., Ph.D., Bryn Mawr College, 1959; AAT 0210413"

"THE 'ARABIAN NIGHTS' IN VICTORIAN LITERATURE
by ANNAN, MARGARET C., Ph.D., Northwestern University, 1946 , 292 pages; AAT 0160278"