The seventh signification of Sindbad: The “Greeking” of Sindbad from the Arabian nights to Disney

Abstract

The Western world, especially America, has had a longstanding interest in re-interpreting the character of Sindbad. After providing a historical context for Sindbad's entry into Western consciousness, this paper will describe and analyze the way in which Sindbad has been transformed by his reinterpreters. The first half will describe the circumstances surrounding the translation of the Nights, revealing the loss of cultural context and cultural content that left Sindbad's character as a role that needed to be filled. The character of the Mediterranean corsair, based in history, the paintings of Racim, and most of all the model set forth by Byron, would fill this role, so that in movies there was an increasing tendency to imagine him as Greek. Behind this reinterpretation of Sindbad is a narcissistic love, which will be shown as the force behind centuries of trying to adopt the character of Sindbad as an inheritor of Greekness, and therefore a part of the West's Greek inheritance.