The Arabian Night's Entertainments - Or The Thousand and One Nights: The Complete, Original Translation with the Translator's Complete, Original Notes and Commentaries on the Text

by Edward William Lane (Translator)

Hardcover, 1927

Status

Available

Call number

FIC A2 Ara

Publication

Tudor Publishing Co.

Pages

1260

Description

The Thousand and One Nights, also called The Arabian Nights, Arabic Alf laylah wa laylah, collection of largely Middle Eastern and Indian stories of uncertain date and authorship. Its tales of Aladdin, Ali Baba, and Sindbad the Sailor have almost become part of Western folklore, though these were added to the collection only in the 18th century in European adaptations.
As in much medieval European literature, the stories—fairy tales, romances, legends, fables, parables, anecdotes, and exotic or realistic adventures—are set within a frame story. Its scene is Central Asia or “the islands or peninsulae of India and China,” where King Shahryar, after discovering that during his absences his wife has been regularly unfaithful, kills her and those with whom she has betrayed him. Then, loathing all womankind, he marries and kills a new wife each day until no more candidates can be found. His vizier, however, has two daughters, Shahrazad (Scheherazade) and Dunyazad; and the elder, Shahrazad, having devised a scheme to save herself and others, insists that her father give her in marriage to the king. Each evening she tells a story, leaving it incomplete and promising to finish it the following night. The stories are so entertaining, and the king so eager to hear the end, that he puts off her execution from day to day and finally abandons his cruel plan.

An unparalleled monument to the ageless art of story-telling, the tales of the One Thousand and One Nights have, for many centuries, titillated the imaginations of generations the world over. Perhaps one of the greatest Arabic, Middle Eastern, and Islamic contributions to world literature, the many stories of the Arabian Nights, (or Alf Laylah wa-Laylah as it is known in Arabic) in their various forms and genres, have influenced literature, music, art, and cinema, and continue to do so until our present day. Whether through its folktales, its magical stories full of adventure, or through its modern depictions as Hollywood feature films or Disney animated movies, almost everyone has been influenced to some extent by at least one or another of Shahrazad’s dazzling Arabian stories of the exotic East. Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to find anyone not familiar with the stories of Aladdin, Ali Baba, or Sindbad among many others, or with such terms as genie and ghoul, all of which became known to the West through the tales of One Thousand and One Nights.
The One Thousand and One Nights, or the Arabian Nights, as it is also known, is constructed as a “frame story” to which all the other tales are subsequently added. The tales themselves come in a very wide variety of genres, including fables, adventures, mysteries, love-stories, dramas, comedies, tragedies, horror stories, poems, burlesque, and erotica. Very simply put, the frame story itself is one of a king, King Shahrayar, who has been betrayed by his wife, and who is off commiserating with his brother, King Shahzaman, who had suffered a similar fate himself. On their journey, they encounter a beautiful woman who is being held captive by the most fearsome genie. The woman threatens to awaken the genie and thus incur certain death upon them, unless they have sexual relations with her. This encounter reinforces King Shahrayar’s loathing of women and confirms his paranoia that women are simply not to be trusted. While his brother simply swears off women completely, our main protagonist, Shahrayar has a more shockingly sinister plan in mind. He rides off back to his kingdom, and swears that he will wed every eligible bride in the land, only to have her executed the next morning before she has had a chance to cuckold him. As might be expected, the king soon runs out of brides to marry, and his grand vizier’s daughter, Shahrazad, who is well-known for her penchant for story-telling, decides to take it upon herself to marry the king despite the vehement protests of her father. Shahrazad, however, has a plan herself : at a certain point every night, she has her young sister Dunyazad come to the royal quarters and urge the new queen to entertain the King and her with one of her famous stories. Shahrazad then puts her talent to good use, beginning a tale every night, but never ending it before daybreak, thus leaving the King enthralled, and willing to spare her life one more night so he can find out what happens with the story. Hence, whenever she finishes a tale — never at daybreak — Shahrazad is sure to start another equally captivating tale, which will go on for another night or so. This continues for one thousand and one nights, until finally, the King is cured of his paranoia and decides he wants keep his queen forever after.

Collection

Barcode

2347

Language

Original language

Arabic

Physical description

1260 p.; 9.25 inches

User reviews

LibraryThing member MartinBodek
Volume 3 was awfuler (I told you my thesaurus broke), than volume 2. I held out for one hope amidst the despair: maybe the story of Sinbad the Sailor would be interesting. Boy, was I wrong, and everything else was far worse. First of all, Sinbad is just as morally bankrupt as anyone else in the
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book. He beats women to death? What is that? Also, he's an idiot. After shipwreck #5, man, just give up. This ain't your line of work. As for the ending, I cared not a whit for it. Scheherazade is saved. Yay, big deal. Where's the mercy for the hundreds of others murdered in the book? As if we're supposed to have a great feeling that she survives. It was like an action movie where millions die in a nuclear holocaust, but yay! The action hero and his lover survive! Whoop-de-do.
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LibraryThing member P_S_Patrick
The intermingling of one story within another is one of the defining features of the Arabian Nights, or the One Thousand and One Nights, depending on which title we use. Though many editions and translations differ in how many and which stories they include, this is a relatively long edition at
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over 700 pages of small type, consisting of around 50 stories, depending on how you count them. The collection of stories that make up the Arabian Nights spans an undefined period of history and geography, though many of them are certainly pre-Islamic in origin, ancient Persian or Indian for example, though the bulk were collected together during the Islamic golden age in the region of Baghdad or Basra in Iraq, which themselves feature as locations for several of the stories. The longer stories of Aladdin, Sinbad, and Ali Baba are not thought to have belonged to the original collection, and were added in by the first European translator in the 18th Century, having possibly a Syrian source.
This version is based on the translation by E.W. Lane published in the 1840s. Lane's translation is most distinctive from the other translations such as Burton's for its exclusion of adult humour and sexual themes, which were a major part of some of the original stories but not popular with the Victorians. However we are still treated to plenty of beheadings and dismemberments so it's still not exactly a children's version.
The stories themselves are of interest as a window onto middle eastern folklore, historical culture and manners, religion and superstition, symbolism, and the mingling of disparate cultures, classes and characters. The plots are often inventive and at other times repetitious and predictable. There is a great mixture of different types of story, from Gothic horror to morality tales, comedy, and tales of action and adventure.
As a work in its totality this does not have the coherence of something written by the same writer with a unified vision. However such a work would not, and could not benefit from the richness and number of ancient cultures that have mingled to produce this hodge-podge of entertaining tales. If we take it for what it is, then what we have is something of interest for many reasons, not least of which is its entertainment value as a group of fantastic stories with a lot of character and exotic colour.
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Rating

(6 ratings; 4)

Call number

FIC A2 Ara
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