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The Thousand and One Nights, 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 .
- Sindbad The Sailor
The stories of Sindbad’s travails, which were a relatively...
- 2-Min Summary
The Thousand and One Nights, or Arabian Nights’...
- Sindbad The Sailor
- History
- Plot Summary
- Major Themes and Motifs
- Literary Techniques and Influences
- Modern References
Origins
In an article about the collection, Professor Daniel Beaumont writes: "Indeed, in recounting its history in the medieval period, there is no need to summarize; a fairly complete account will read like a summary, since most of its medieval history is unknown and is likely to remain unknown." His words illustrate a widely understood fact about the Arabian Nights: while some aspects of the history of the tales can be traced, a lot of it is undocumented and open to debate and speculation. Though...
Versions and translations
The first known reference to the Nights is a 9th-century A.D papyrus fragment. The papyrus mentions two characters, Dînâzâd and Shîrâzâd—later to become Dunyâzâd and Shahrazâd—and has a few lines of narrative in which the former asks the latter to tell a story. Interestingly, there is also mention of a title that anticipates the title we now know: “The Book of Stories From the Thousand Nights.” About a century later, the text is mentioned next in 947 by al-Masʿūdī in a discussion of legendary...
Frame Story
The frame story of the Arabian Nights presents King Shahryar who after discovering his wife's unfaithfulness, kills her and those with whom she betrays him. As a consequence, he decides to marry and kill a new wife each day until no more candidates can be found. His advisor has two daughters, Shahrazad and Dunyazad; and the elder, Shahrazad, devises a scheme to save herself and others and so insists that her father give her hand in marriage to the king. Then each evening she tells him a story...
The story of the Porter and the Three Ladies
A Porter is hired by a woman who takes him to a wine-merchant, a fruiterer, a butcher, a grocer, a confectioner, a perfumer, a greengrocer, and then home. The door is opened by ‘a lady of tall figure, some five feet high’ who lets them in. Once inside the house, they come before a third lady, the eldest of the three, who pays the porter and tells him to depart. He persuades them to let him stay and join their feast, and they all start to drink wine and recite poetry together. When she is suff...
The Role of the Supernatural
There are several fantastical elements that play a major thematic role in the Arabian Nights. Traces of supernatural creatures like flying carpets, automatons and genies, living islands, underground rivers, magnetic mountains, flying griffins amongst others are present throughout the tales. For example, the following episode from the Sindbad tales seems to reflect motifs of classical Greek literature in addition to traditional supernatural elements found in Arab and Persian folktales. In his...
Fate and Human Agency
The themes of Fate and Human Agency are extremely significant in the Arabian Nights. On the one hand, many characters in the tales are at the mercy of their fate and are unable to fight their destiny. At the same time, human agency is given a lot of significance in many of the tales where readers are exposed to characters that are able to use their efforts and intelligence to achieve seemingly impossible success. The most evident example of this is Shahrazad in comparison to the many other wo...
Sexual desire and Eroticism
Eroticism and sexuality are a major theme and motif within the Arabian Nights. In the frame story, King Shahryar struggles with accepting his wife's sexual desires that lead to her unfaithfullness when he is away during war. The same is the case with his brother. The telling of the tales at night, in the sleeping chamber add to the theme of sexuality and eroticism that is prevalent in many of the tales. The couple are in an intimate space, where the reader is allowed to enter. The king spends...
Embedded Narrative and the Importance of Storytelling
The Arabian Nights employs the use of a frame story or a framing device through which Shahrazad presents a set of tales to the King over many nights. Interestingly, many of the tales within the overarching frame story are also frame stories themselves. For example, The story of the Porter and the Three Ladies is a frame tale containing the stories of each of the major characters within it. This is also the case inSinbad the Sailor where Sinbad relates the stories of his seven voyages. The con...
Matisse's "The Thousand and One Nights"
French Modernist Henri Matisse is best known for is experimentation with perspectives, color and figuration. One of the most famous and appreciated pieces the artist created during his last few years when he was confined to his bed is an abstract take on the Arabia Nights. The 1950 piece is a 4.5 by 12 foot cutout crafted from gouache-stained paper. Matisse's "The Thousand and One Nights" is divided into five panels. The first panel shows a lantern with smoke seeping out of its spout and is i...
Disney's Aladdin
Disney's 1992 animated movie Aladdin is famously inspired by the Tale of Aladdin and the magic lamp from the Thousand and One Nights. Disney describes it the movie in the following words: The Disney adaptation is interesting on multiple levels. In terms of themes, several aspects of the original tales are captured. The "enchanted city" that Aladdin lives in seems to resemble one from an Arab country with its surrounding dessert landscape, the clothes and names of the characters and the bazaar...
The Arabian Nights
Arabian Nights is a 1942 adventure film based on the Thousand and One Nights. A closer look at the film however, reveals that the movie is more a work of imagination keeping in mind its western audience than a representation of the the Arabian tales. The film is one of series of "exotic" tales released by Universal Studios during the war years. Others include Cobra Woman, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and White Savage all of which can also be attributed to being inspired by the the Arabian t...
Illustration of One Thousand and One Nights by Sani ol molk, Iran, 1849–1856. Leitwortstil is "the purposeful repetition of words" in a given literary piece that "usually expresses a motif or theme important to the given story." This device occurs in the One Thousand and One Nights, which binds several tales in a story cycle. The storytellers ...
- Muhsin S. Mahdi
- 1995
People also ask
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What is one thousand and One Nights?
the thousand and one nights the book of the thousand nights and a night in the name of allah,the compassionating, the compassionate! praise be to allah the beneficent king the creator of the universe lord of the three worlds who set up the firmament without pillars in its stead and who stretched out the earth even as a bed and grace, and prayer-blessing be upon our lord mohammed lord of ...
Oct 26, 2017 · 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 …
This is a list of the stories in Richard Francis Burton's translation of One Thousand and One Nights. Burton's first ten volumes—which he called The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night —were published in 1885.
May 6, 2020 · Similarly, Hofmannsthal, in his 1895 novel The Tale of the 672nd Night, writes about the son of a merchant who lives in isolation and who is suddenly forced to leave his self-sufficient home only to enter a strange, enchanted outside world, which exposes him to an unexpected death.
