1000 Nights in World Lit

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Since 1704, the year in which Antoine Galland embarked on his popular translation of a 14th c. Arabic manuscript of Alf layla wa-layla, The Thousand and One Nights (or Les mille et une nuits, or The Arabian Nights, etc.) has captivated Western audiences. By all its modern names, this collection of stories has played a huge role in the development of fictional prose narrative in the West, and provided countless themes and images for its popular cultures in print, theatre, music and film. Yet, for all its enthusiasm, the Western reception of the Nights usually ignores issues raised by the text’s Arabo-Islamic context, not only the classical Islamic era in which it first emerged or its reception through later centuries, but also in the modern period. Indeed, it is strange how often these stories are read without consideration of how they converse with basic issues of Islamic theology, kingly conduct, or the world of Indian Sea mercantile culture. But reference to the text’s Arabo-Islamic context raises more questions than its answers, for its standing in the West far outshines its reputation in the Arab world. Thus, while it is true that from its earliest Arabic-language inception Alf layla wa-layla was central to popular forms of story-telling in the Arab world, its status within the classical Arabic literary tradition has always been quite ambiguous. Alf layla wa-layla is both critical within the development of Arabic literature and marginal to it; it is both a cornerstone of the Arabic literary canon and a footnote within it. These ambiguities notwithstanding, reading Alf layla wa-layla within its Arabo-Islamic context reveals critical aspects of the text that most Western adaptations miss. This course investigates The Thousand and One Nights through a variety of critical and methodological lenses. First, we will philologically trace the Persian, Indian and Pharaonic origins of some of the stories while also paying attention to issues that arise with medieval recensions, modern translations, and cinematic adaptations. Second, we will investigate the formal and rhetorical structures of the core stories of the text, as well as how they have been conserved (or ignored) in modern adaptations. Finally, we will consider the ways in which the text’s colonial and postcolonial receptions—both in the West and in the Arab world—have been linked to questions of political ideology, especially Orientalism.