The Arabian Nights Reader (review)
2008; Wayne State University Press; Volume: 22; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1536-1802
Autores Tópico(s)Language, Linguistics, Cultural Analysis
ResumoArabian Reader. Edited by Ulnch Marzolph. Series in Fairy Tale Studies. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2006. 392 pp. Reading essays selected for inclusion in Arabian Reader will take some readers on autobiographical journeys of their own development as scholars. I found myself transported back to graduate school as I reread essays from 1970s and 1980s, those studies I had immersed myself in as I was finding my own voice and path through Thousand and One as a young academic. scholars will all find themselves in one essay or another in Marzolph's representative sampling of twentieth-century scholarship. original publication dates for these studies range from 1942 (Gustav E. von Grunebaum's Form Elements in Arabian Nights) to 1997 (Fedwa Malti- Douglas's Shahrazad Feminist), and just as far- ranging are paleographical, critical, and theoretical approaches these writers take to Arabian Nights. Arabian Reader is perhaps best suited, however, to new scholar or curious reader who will have pleasure of indulging in some of these essays for first time. One learns some of basics, such as fact that frame story of Arabian (better known as Alf Layla wa-Layla among Arabic scholars) dates from at least ninth century of common era and was most likely adapted from a Persian tale titled Hazar Af sana (Thousand Tales) from relatively early essays by Nabia Abbott (1949) and Solomon D. Goitein (1958). Abbott's A Ninth-Century Fragment of 'Thousand Nights': New Light on Early History of Arabian Nights not only sheds light on provenance of Nights, but also describes one of earliest (if not earliest) fragments of a a pap er book outside ancient Far East (73) and explains how material itself indicates much about source of fragment. How much of history and transmission of Arabian scholars do not yet agree on or know for a certainty is demonstrated by Heinz Grotzf eld's Neglected Conclusions of Arabian Nights; his The Age of Galland Manuscript of Nights; and Muhsin Mahdi's Sources of Galland's Nuits. first of these essays outlines various ways in which conclusion has been cast in various versions of Nights, explaining how Shahrazad's gender and fertility were chosen by some redactors as more significant than her storytelling prowess, some of which Malti- Douglas returns to in Shahrazad Feminist. Grotzfeld and Mahdi essays on Galland manuscript demonstrate one of many mild controversies regarding this work in that each dates Galland source manuscript by different means and comes to a different conclusion. For general reader, difference between a fourteenth- or fifteenthcentury manuscript might be negligible, but for scholars steeped in exciting and frustrating history of a lack of documentary evidence for so much concerning this work, debate continues to fascinate. Amid all discussion of various Arab, Persian, and Indian sources of Arabian Nights, von Grunebaum (Greek Form Elements in Arabian Nights) ana Peter Heath (Romance as Genre in Thousand and One Nights) bring out parallels between some of form and content of and those of Greek romance genres. While the very nature of Greek contribution formed greatest obstacle to its discovery (von Grunebaum 138), various hints of Greek influence are apparent in structure of some of shorter embedded tales as well as in their character development. …
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