Thread: Literary One Thousand and One Nights
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Old 05-18-2017, 01:55 AM   #20
Bookworm_Girl
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fantasyfan View Post
A source that might be interesting is Arabian Society In The Middle Ages: Studies From The Thousand And One Nights by Edward William Lane. It is available free from Project Gutenberg.
Thanks for the recommendation! I have been reading this book along with the stories. For a modern perspective I have also been browsing The Arabian Nights: A Companion by Robert Irwin. I have access to it through my Scribd subscription.

Quote:
From Library Journal:
In this learned and exotic companion to the Arabian Nights, Irwin, a novelist and the author of The Middle East in the Middle Ages (Southern Illinois Univ. Pr., 1986), provides a history of its origins, translations, and textual editors; a treatment of the various literary approaches to the text (structuralist, folklorist, etc.); and insight into the work as social history. Irwin has, admittedly, concentrated on the "seedy and bizarre" aspects of the tales, asserting that the Arabic world of criminals, sorcerers, drug-takers, and adulterers is far less known than the edifying world of miracle-working holy men and sages. Though the Arab world long viewed the Nights as folk literature, in the West it has continued to exert enormous influence on diverse writers, giving way, only in the 20th century, to its rival genres, science fiction and fantasy. Irwin's soundly researched and provocative work is highly recommended for academics and interested readers of Arabic social history and literature.
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