The Arabian Nights in Contemporary World Cultures

Global Commodification, Translation, and the Culture Industry

Muhsin J. al-Musawi

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781108474856
• eBook ISBN:
  9781108577137
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

The stories in the Thousand and One Nights, or the Arabian Nights, are familiar to many of us: from the tales of Aladdin, Sinbad the Sailor, Ali Baba and his forty thieves, to the framing story of Scheherazade telling these stories to her homicidal husband, Shahrayar. This book offers a rich and wide-ranging analysis of the power of this collection of tales that penetrates so many cultures and appeals to such a variety of predilections and tastes. It also explores areas that were left untouched, like the decolonization of the Arabian Nights, and its archaeologies. Unique in its excavation into inroads of perception and reception, Muhsin J. al-Musawi's book unearths means of connection with common publics and learned societies. Al-Musawi shows, as never before, how the Arabian Nights has been translated, appropriated, and authenticated or abused over time, and how its reach is so expansive as to draw the attention of poets, painters, illustrators, translators, editors, musicians, political scientists like Leo Strauss, and novelists like Michel Butor, James Joyce and Marcel Proust amongst others. Making use of documentaries, films, paintings, novels and novellas, poetry, digital forums and political jargon, this book offers nuanced understanding of the perennial charm and power of this collection.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Frontispiece
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Stunning Growth of a Constellation
• 1 The Arabian Nights: A European Legacy?
• 2 The Scheherazade Factor
• 3 Engagements in Narrative
• 4 The “Hostile Dynasty”: Rewriting the Arabian Nights
• 5 The Archaeology of A Thousand and One Nights
• 6 Signatures and Affiliates
• 7 Decolonizing the Arabian Nights?
• 8 Invitation to Discourse
• Appendix A: Editions Worldwide
• Appendix B: Selections from a Comparative Study between the Grub Street Translation of Galland (Reprinted in The Novelist’s Magazine), and Haddawy’s Translation of Muhsin Mahdi’s Edition of Galland’s Original Arabic Manuscript
• Select Bibliography
• Index