Arabian Nights Research Articles

Arabic Narrative in American Voices: Edgar Allan Poe and John Barth

Abstract In this paper, I set out to demonstrate how Poe and Barth understand Arabic narrative showcased in The Arabian Nights, and why they show so much approximation, deviation, and swerve. In their misreading, both Poe and Barth reveal much about the mechanism of the incorporation of Arabic narrative as much as they convey their own cultural and literary concerns. Premised on postcolonial and postmodern theory, I show how the American Orientalism of Poe and Barth perpetrates a misrepresentation of both Arabic narrative, Muslims, and the East. While Foucault’s ‘conditions of possibility’ pertain to a cultural context that is bound to inform writing, there is also the predilection of both writers to maraud Alf Laylah wa-Laylah as their free zone, a colony of a sort.

A Comparative Study of Baghdad as a Histo-Cultural Symbol in Salah Al-Hamdani's "Baghdad, My Love" and Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Recollections of Arabian Nights"

This study examines the disparate literary representations of Baghdad by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) and Salah al-Hamdani (1951–). The romanticized and wistful longing for a more exotic and daring Baghdad of Tennyson's "Recollections of the Arabian Nights" is presented. As an illustration of a deep love for its people, al-Hamdani's "Baghdad, Mon Amour" provides a close-up look into the city's stormy past. Al-Hamdani uses powerful imagery and moving language to capture Baghdad's resiliency and eternal soul. The poetry of Hamdani and Lord Tennyson are scrutinized and contrasted in this study using an eclectic approach combining Feminism and Orientalism analysis. In order to capture the poets' literary traditions and lyrical depictions of Baghdad, two poems were chosen. The analysis demonstrates how poetry may engage with a city's complicated character and history, underscoring Baghdad's ongoing value as a literary inspiration. The investigation comes to the conclusion that, albeit using different approaches, Tennyson and al-Hamdani both successfully convey Baghdad's significance as a historical and cultural metropolis. Al-Hamdani takes a reality-based stance, functioning as an observer, whereas Tennyson highlights the value of Baghdad by incorporating its history and culture.

A Manuscript of the Arabian Nights and Its Journey to Cambridge

Abstract Cambridge University Library holds an Arabic manuscript of The Thousand and One Nights (Ms Qq.106–109). The library records it as entering the collection in 1819 and codicological evidence shows that the manuscript was copied in Cairo in the early 19th century. This paper discusses the complex narrative of its acquisition, including the roles played by prominent travellers and collectors. The significance of the text of the ‘Nights’ and its popularity in England and Europe are also examined as are the factors that made the Arabic text of this work much sought-after at the time. The influence of the contemporary political situation, the conditions of travel in the Middle East, and the individuals involved with the text’s acquisition are described, focusing on those with a Cambridge connection. A detailed analysis of the activities and twists of fate resulting in the acquisition of this particular manuscript are traced in contemporary sources.

The Development of Video Game Representations of the Middle East

This article critically explores the historical representation of the Middle East in video games until 2002 and following the 9/11 event. Using thematic analysis, we identify four main themes and discuss how this representation shifts with time, offering a brief overview of the broader context. I argue that there is a clear association between political developments and this western representation, for we can clearly observe changes from the romantic, exotic, and orientalist views of the region and Arab and Muslim figure shown within the realms of the Arabian Nights theme to a more militant figure and dangerous place due to featuring armed conflict in the Middle East such as the first Gulf War. Though not included in the discussion, 9/11 introduced a more negative and Islamophobic representation that is associated with Islamist terrorism, and it marks the latest development in these themes.

Intertextuality of selected Arabic and Western literary works

This paper conducts a comparative analysis of the literary-cultural impact of Arabic literature on Western literature. This research focuses on three literary comparisons taken from works that belong to Arabic and Western literature by means of a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the target textual data. The study chooses to address the following items: the Spanish play by Lope de Vega (1562-1635), La Doncella Teodor which has a similar Arabic version among the Arab tales of the Arabian Nights, the literary influence of the story of Zarqa al-Yamamah on Shakespeare’s play Macbeth and the literary mirroring of the Arabic story of Solomon and the Angel of Death onto Marquez’s novel Flee to Samarra by unveiling the aspects of the literary impact of each Arabic literary item. The study illustrates elements of intertextuality and functionality that close the gap between text and culture on each spectrum as well as between the Occident and the Orient by looking at the degree of similarity between these stories. This study contributes to offering insights into the literary intertextuality between Arabic literature and Western literature (Spanish and English) while also sheds light on the cross-cultural perceptions between the two forms of literature by examining the textual, cultural and psychological aspects of each extract compared with each other.

A Thousand and One Laylas: The Politics of Narrative Embedding in Laila Neffa’s Ais

In Montevideo in 1951, the Uruguayan-born Lebanese poet and translator Laila Neffa published the poetry collection Ais. Framed within the semi-historical legendary story of Layla al-ʿAmiriya and Qays ibn al-Mulawwah, two seventh-century Bedouin poets whose forbidden love resulted in madness and death, this was Neffa’s elegiac homage to her brother Ais, who passed away in adolescence. This article reads Ais as a re-appropriation of Jorge Luis Borges’ literary sleight-of-hand, involving mise en abyme, enacted by the Argentine author on the Arabian Nights in his 1949 essay “Magias parciales del Quijote”. I propose that Neffa’s re-appropriative act facilitates a “speaking back to” and an “opening up” of a varied selection of Arab, Arabo-Persian, and Euro- and Spanish-American discursive traditions. These negotiations, translations, and transformations of tradition, I argue, set in motion a recovery of self and others, of Laila and Laylas, in the wake of personal and collective trauma.

An Archetypal Reading of The Arabian Nights: Mythic Hero and Monomyth in Selected Stories

The Arabian Nights is a literary masterpiece that has captivated readers for centuries with its magical elements, mythical creatures and traditional patterns of archetypes. This study delves into the underlying similarities and differences among the types of archetypal characters depicted in two tales, “Three Apples” and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”. The focus is on the notion of mythic hero, exploring the use of archetypal symbols, images, characters and protagonists’ quests to identify the principles of heroism central to their characterisation. The study draws upon Joseph Campbell’s theory of Monomyth, which entails a pattern for the hero’s journey that includes three rites of passage: separation, initiation and return. By examining the journeys of Ja’far and Ali Baba through this lens, we find that both possess essential qualities of a hero in accordance with the tenets of monomyth. Despite their idiosyncratic differences, they are portrayed as ordinary men without any supernatural heroic powers who are urged to reclaim their social status by embarking on an adventure where they go through rebirth, face death and triumph over evil. The findings highlight how the use of mythical elements such as magic and traditional patterns contribute to the perennial appeal of the collection

Metanarratives in Translation: A Case of Richard Burton’s A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments

This paper investigates how Richard Burton reframed the original narrative of The Thousand and One Nights in alignment with the traditional Orientalist stance while translating the Nights through the translated text and its paratexts. The analysis was done by studying the translation and the footnotes of three tales in the Nights, in addition to the major paratextual material in the translation: The Terminal Essay. The researchers find that Burton has injected the Victorian Islamophobic metanarrative into the translation through his excessive annotations to accentuate the Orientalist public narrative on the East that was formulated by 19th-Century Victorian England. This is inferred from his ideas on imperialism, which were later incorporated into the translation and its paratexts. Burton represents the tales with ends that encourage imperialism, although he criticizes and condemns the Victorian moral mandate in some areas of his translation.

Deconstructive Narratives, Decreasing Doublets, Deceptive Cadences, and the Design of Circles: Strategies for Building a Closure in the Arabian Nights

While the beginning of the frame narrative in The Thousand and One Nights has generated many interpretations, its ending has gone almost unnoticed. This article discusses various narrative strategies for constructing an ending. The examples are taken from a corpus of texts consisting of the Arabic collection Alf layla wa-layla (“The Thousand and One Nights”) as it existed in the 9th/15th century and the so-called “orphan stories,” the tales Ḥannā Diyāb (c. 1688 – after 1763) told to Antoine Galland (1646–1715), who published them in expanded form in volumes nine through twelve of his Mille et une nuit[s]. It is argued that The Thousand and One Nights are by no means an arbitrary compilation of stories. On the contrary, they are a carefully crafted literary composition. This is particularly evident in the way of constructing narrative closures which create a feeling of satisfactory completion. This is demonstrated by pointing to narrative devices discovered in literary studies of works of the highest stratum of world literatures. It also advocates studying the work in its original form, the text of which has yet to be reconstructed.

Current perspective of brain-computer interfaces in arm exoskeletons

With the development of world scientific level, brain-computer interfaces (BCI) have become possible from the Arabian Nights. It has been achieved that humans do not need to act, but only use their thoughts to manipulate machines. Currently, many people are attempting to combine brain-computer interfaces with arm exoskeletons to assist humans who have lost mobility. This paper will interpret the literature on brain computer interface technology retrieved in the past five years, and summarize the current development and application of this technology in the world. Research has found that the literature on this technology has been increasing every year in recent years. The United States is in a leading position in this field, with research results and publications leading the world. At present, the development level of this technology is very considerable, and some people have already experienced the convenience brought by this technology. However, overall, the technology combining brain-computer interfaces with arm exoskeletons is not yet perfect. There are still many aspects that can be refined. This paper aims to provide a reference for further research and application in this field, and to provide useful references and ideas for workers and researchers in related fields.

Angels, Guests and Sadists: On-Screen Poetry in the Cinema of Pier Paolo Pasolini

This article considers how poetry features in Pasolini’s cinema. It argues that the manner in which Pasolini films poetry provides insight into his theory of an affinity between poetry and film, and into more general judgements concerning social reality. The article begins with an analysis of the final sequence of Salò (1975) where I argue that Ezra Pound’s poetry provides a soundtrack for the spectacle of torture in which the film’s libertines engage. Following this, I consider Pasolini’s 1965 text “The Cinema of Poetry” and use this text as a way of reading the role played by a copy of Rimbaud’s collected poems in Teorema ( Theorem, 1968). I then move to consider the relationship between oral recitation and text in Il decameron ( The Decameron, 1971) and Il fiore della mille e una notte ( The Arabian Nights, 1974). In doing this, I argue that one can observe a shift across these films whereby poetry and orality move from being a foundational moment for reciprocal community to being a vehicle for an ambiguous and violent fate. The article then considers the conspicuous presence of reading and writing within Salò before ending with a consideration of one scene towards the end of the film in which Pasolini appears to invest a recitation of the Gospel with a disruptive force that is otherwise lacking in his final film.

"Dişileştirilmiş" Doğu'da Kadın: Şehrazat ile Peçe Duvarını Yıkmak

Orientalism is portrayed by Edward Said within the context of how cultural differences have made the West construct an image of the East with the dichotomy of Orient/Occident. Numerous writings have been engendered depicting Eastern culture, tradition, and religion that shaped the West’s perceptions of the East. These writings have revolved around not only ethnicity and religion but also gender, hence leading to the juxtaposition of the dichotomy Orient-Occident with that of feminine-masculine. This alignment has brought forward the most common stereotype pertaining to the place of woman, in other words, the veiled woman which is a predominant symbol of the East. Thus, the East can be said to have been “feminized” by the West. Initiated by the cultural, political, and religious divide between the West and the East, this “feminization” was deepened by ongoing representations of Oriental women by Westerners in the history of Orientalism: how veiled woman has been kept “silence” in the East. Unlike these representations, there is a powerful woman who broke this silence and inspired Oriental women: Scheherazade. Through her stories, Scheherazade encouraged men to look past their own ignorance and biases, recognize the existence and value of women, and encourage women to remove their own veil to demand their rights. In this paper, the aim is to explore how Scheherazade in The Tales of One Thousand and One Nights (The Arabian Nights) inspirited Oriental women through the art of storytelling to fight for emancipation from the engrained stereotypes.

Solomon, His Jinn, and Molten Copper

Abstract The tale of the City of Brass, best known today from the Arabian Nights, tells of the imagined encounter between humans and the occult properties of the material world, namely, the powers inherent in minerals. In the Middle Ages knowledge of such properties was transmitted in works such as the Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm and Alfonso X’s Lapidario. This article explores how this knowledge of precious stones and metals is reflected in the versions of the City of Brass transmitted in medieval Iberia, particularly in the use of copper manifest in the vessels, statues, walls, and domes that bind or contain jinn, treasures, and secrets of the pre-Islamic past.

Fragments of Reality: Landscape and Sexuality in Arabian Nights (1974)

This article explores themes of sexuality and landscape in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film . Utilizing an auteurist perspective and incorporating scholarly sources, archival images, critical reception, and the filmmaker’s writings, this article also examines the linkages between Pasolini’s biography and his formally challenging, politically conscious cinematic adaptation of the ancient Arabic anthology, One Thousand and One Nights.

The Qiṣṣat al-Ḥağğāğ from the University Library in Bratislava

This article provides a description, scholarly edition, and translation of an interesting variant of a well-known folk narrative entitled Qiṣṣat al-Ḥağğāğ about the famous Umayyad governor al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf and a young man. The story also appears in various other manuscripts but has rarely been studied. In this case, it is preserved in Ms. TF 136 No. 387 from the Bašagić’s Collection of Islamic Manuscripts, which is housed at the University Library in Bratislava, Slovakia. The variation of the story was also integrated into the Arabian Nights, being a part of the well-known Wortley-Montague manuscript stored in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. To preserve the authentic scribal practices, the presented edition offers the text with all its orthographic and linguistic peculiarities, regardless of how insignificant or incomprehensible they might seem. The edition is accompanied by a translation and explanatory notes. This is probably the first time that a complete text from the Bašagić’s Collection has been thoroughly studied.

A MILLENNIUM OF ONE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS

No other work of Oriental literature has had such an influence on Europe as the collection of Arabic tales entitled One Thousand and One Nights. It was first translated from the Syrian original into French (Les Mille et Une Nuits, 1704–17) by the orientalist Antoine Galland and into English by Richard Burton (The Thousand Nights and a Night, 1885–88). The first Slovenian translation is an adaptation: the translator was Filip Lipe Haderlap, and the title was Tisoč in ena noč: pravljice iz jutrovih dežel (One Thousand and One Nights: Fairy Tales from the Lands of the East, 1880–91). It is a Christianized translation from German based on the Viennese edition (Max Habicht, Friedrich Heinrich von der Hagen, Carl Schall: Die Erzählungen der 1001 Nacht aus Tunesien. Arabische Erzahlungen [1825]). In the Slovenian adaptation, Scheherazade is called Lunica, Dinarezada Srebrnica, Sultan Shahryar is Riar, his brother Shahzeman is Senan, and the vizier is a minister. Makalonca (1944) by F. S. Finžgar was also taken from the Arabic collection entitled Zgodba o Kamar-al-Zamanu in kitajski princesi Badur (The Tale of Kamar al-Zaman and the Chinese Princess Badur), in Haderlap’s translation under the title Historija od princa Krasnobora in od Kitajske princezinje Milene (The History of Prince Krasnobor and of the Chinese Princess Milena). Slovenian readers are most familiar with individual fairy tales (Aladdin and the Magic Lamp, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, TheThief of Bagdad, The Magic Horse, Harun al-Rashid, The Fisherman and the Genie, Open Sesame, Sinbad the Sailor, TheThree Apples, etc.).

American orientalism: A critical reading through Edgar Allan Poe

To date, The Arabian Nights still create frames of reference outside its fictive core. The article critically examined the adaptations and appropriation of the classic Arabian Nights by Edgar Allan Poe and how he invested his interest in the Orient to advance his career as a writer. More specifically, the aim was to study the links between European Orientalism and the new version of the Orient constructed in the United States. Various modes of reading and approaches were used to critically interpret the primary texts. Orientalism and postcolonial theories provided a theoretical framework for the study, and the deconstructive approach was applied in certain contexts to deconstruct and dismantle the stereotyping and mythologizing of the Orient. The article contributed to the growing scholarship on American oriental discourse by offering a counter perspective. Poe’s poems and short stories all perpetuate negative oriental representations. His obsession with the Orient is not reflected as aesthetic appreciation but it is rather appropriation that distorts and never restores. Poe’s oriental discourse is only examined lately by Arab critics of American literature and more specifically it surfaced through translations of his works into Arabic. Through stereotypical duplication in the world of realism, a fake Orient has become there in the world of reality.

The Arabian Nights in Contemporary World Cultures: Global Commodification, Translation, and the Culture Industry, written by Muhsin Al-Musawi

The Arabian Nights in Contemporary World Cultures: Global Commodification, Translation, and the Culture Industry, written by Muhsin Al-Musawi

The Magic Lamp in American Fiction: An Archetypal Approach to Mark Twain and Kurt Vonnegut

This paper examines the symbolism of the magic lamp in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) and Kurt Vonnegut's Hal Irwin's Magic Lamp (1957). This study, which uses an archetypal approach to the texts, demonstrates how the American authors use the literary source of the magic lamp image from the Middle Eastern folktale collection of the Arabian Nights, where the lamp essentially represents Aladdin's dream and a quick route to success. Furthermore, the two authors aim to transform this image into the motif of the American dream in its modern contexts. These two literary works likewise made an effort to use the picture as a vehicle for the issues of slavery, racial prejudice, and class inequality. Additionally, the characters’ desire to escape their social and economic constraints is, contrary to what they anticipate, frustrated because of their use of the lamp. Moreover, the wishes of the characters in both texts to escape from their social and economic restraints are, contrary to their expectations, thwarted as a result of their use of the lamp. This negative outcome renders the function of the lamp the opposite to its original function in the literary sources of the texts.

The Power of Female Speech in two Medieval Tales: A Comparative Study

The story has been a fundamental vehicle for teaching throughout history, especially during the medieval period. Two enlightening medieval collections of stories are the eastern The Arabian Nights and the western Lais of Marie de France. Several Comparative Literature programs teach these two literary works in their courses. The tales within these collections function for the two female storytellers, Scheherazade and Marie de France, to educate their political authorities through the positive influence of their speech. This paper examines the power of speech in convincing Medieval rulers to change their attitudes toward women. Throughout these two collections of stories, we find several types of indirect persuasive methods of speech, such as cause and effect, logic, evidence, seduction and emotion, used by the characters to have a positive effect on their audience. The target of the paper is to discover how these two female storytellers make use of the duality of speech and quick convention in a way that supports their efforts to change a powerful ruler’s attitude toward women and to convince him that speech, in general, and women’s speech, in particular, are valuable things.