An image from the classic Middle Eastern collection of tales, Arabian Nights
Arabian Nights, also known as One Thousand and One Nights to others, is a collection of tales from the entirety of the Islamic Golden Age and compiled and framed into the following story setting: The sultan Shahrayar has been cheated on by his wife, and has put her to death to prevent her further betrayals. He then marries and kills a new wife every day to spite his wife and prevent betrayal by another woman. This cycles continues until Scheherazade, his vizier's daughter, marries him and begins interesting tales at night before bed, and then leaves the ending for the next night so he will not kill her because of his interest in the story. The stories covered in Reading A cover the tale of the Merchant and the Genius, a tale about a merchant that has been given one year to live by the genie and spends it doing good deeds, which then leads into many more stories about the Old Man, the Second Old Man, and Two Black Dogs that are sequential and connected to the first. In the Fisherman story, the fisherman demands a story from a genie before he kills him, which illustrates a second level of storytelling (a character telling a story about another character who tells a story), which was revolutionary at the time. The later stories of the Greek King and the Husband and the Parrot take place within the genie's story in the fisherman tale. These stories are so wonderfully woven and complex and their framing is so unique, which I really enjoy about this collection of stories.
Bibliography: Scheherazade, Arabian Nights. http://mythfolklore.blogspot.com/2014/04/myth-folklore-unit-arabian-nights.html
No comments:
Post a Comment