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Loading... The Arabian Nights A Companion (edition 2003)by Robert Irwin
Work InformationThe Arabian Nights: A Companion by Robert Irwin
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Irwin provides some history for the tales in 1001 Nights as well as a good description of the (presumed) context in which they were told and retold, and the history and context are greatly enriching my reading of the recent (2010) Penguin Classics edition of the "complete" Calcutta II collection of stories. He tells also the history of the Nights as a western literary phenomenon, presenting the collection as a very influential precursor of entire genres of Western literature -- science fiction, sword-and-sorcery, fantasy, magic realism -- and does the whole thing with humor, humility, and general good nature. This is exactly what a "Companion" should be and when I finished it I went back to the start and began again. no reviews | add a review
The Arabian Nights: A Companion guides the reader into this celebrated labyrinth of storytelling. It traces the development of the stories from prehistoric India and Pharaonic Egypt to modern times. It explores the history of the translation, and explains the ways in which its contents have been added to, plagiarized and imitated. Above all, the book uses the stories as a guide to the social history and the counterculture of the medieval Near East and the world of the storyteller, the snake charmer, the burglar, the sorcerer, the drug addict, the treasure hunter and the adulterer. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)809Literature By Topic History, description and criticism of more than two literaturesLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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The most famous version is Richard Burton’s; Irwin notes that a lot of the Burton “translation” is more of a Burton “invention”; for example, in the original Arabic, King Shahriyar embarks on his virgin-a-night project after finding his wife with “a black slave”; in Burton’s translation she’s with “a big slobbering blackamoor with rolling eyes which showed the whites, a truly hideous sight”. Burton also exaggerates much of the obscenity and vulgarity in the stories – to be fair, though, the originals are definitely not Disney material. However, Jorge Luis Borges preferred Burton’s version to more authentic translations, arguing that “neutral” versions were no contribution to literature.
The Nights probably influenced many European writers – even, paradoxically, some who never actually read any of it but just heard about the stories. Irwin notes some were influenced by the storytelling technique – for example, the Heptameron and Decameron – while others picked up on the exotic settings – Vathek and The Saragossa Manuscript. Certainly many expressions and ideas from the stories have made their way into popular Western culture; how many times have we heard that “the genie is out of the bottle” with regard to some technological advance of controversial import?
This is an erudite but readable and fascinating book. I have an abridged copy of Burton’s version (the full one is sixteen volumes); I’ll have to read it in the light of some of Irwin’s insights. ( )