Scheherazade's Children: Global Encounters with the Arabian Nights

Published by New York University Press 2013

Scheherazade's Children

Global Encounters with the Arabian Nights

Edited by: Philip F. Kennedy and Marina Warner

https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479837922.001.0001

Overview
Contents

About this book

Scheherazade’s Children gathers together leading scholars to explore the reverberations of the tales of the Arabian Nights across a startlingly wide and transnational range of cultural endeavors. The contributors, drawn from a wide array of disciplines, extend their inquiries into the book’s metamorphoses on stage and screen as well as in literature—from India to Japan, from Sanskrit mythology to British pantomime, from Baroque opera to puppet shows. Their highly original research illuminates little-known manifestations of the Nights, and provides unexpected contexts for understanding the book’s complex history. Polemical issues are thereby given unprecedented and enlightening interpretations.
Organized under the rubrics of Translating, Engaging, and Staging, these essays view the Nights corpus as a uniquely accretive cultural bundle that absorbs the works upon which it has exerted influence. In this view, the Arabian Nights is a dynamic, living and breathing cross-cultural phenomenon that has left its mark on fields as disparate as the European novel and early Indian cinema. While scholarly, the writers’ approach is also lively and entertaining, and the book is richly illustrated with unusual materials to deliver a sparkling and highly original exploration of the Arabian Nights’ radiating influence on world literature, performance, and culture.

Author / Editor information

Kennedy Philip F. :

Philip F. Kennedy is Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and Comparative Literature at New York University, and General Editor of the Library of Arabic Literature. He is the author of Recognition in the Arabic Narrative Tradition.Warner Marina :

Marina Warner DBE is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, University of London; a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford; and a Fellow of the British Academy. Her book Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights won the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, as well as the 2013 Sheikh Zayed Book Award.Philip F. Kennedy (Editor)
Philip F. Kennedy is Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and Comparative Literature at New York University, and General Editor of the Library of Arabic Literature. He is the author of Recognition in the Arabic Narrative Tradition.

Marina Warner (Editor)
Marina Warner DBE is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, University of London; a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford; and a Fellow of the British Academy. Her book Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights won the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, as well as the 2013 Sheikh Zayed Book Award.

Reviews

Beautifully illustrated, this title concludes with a list of the stories, their translations, and adaptations. Though the essays take up academic subjects, they are accessible to general readers.

These scrupulously documented essays justify study of the Nights as 'one of the wellsprings of World Literature' that continues to draw readers, scholars, translators, and artists into a theatrical, imaginary land, which, like the narrator herself, casts an entrancing spell and proves inexhaustible in meanings, 'blending cultural specificities into one vast Prient of the mind.'

Scheherazades Children is an excellent collection of essays covering several aspects of the Arabian Nights.

Daniel Beaumont, author of Slave of Desire: Sex, Love, and Death in the 1001 Nights:
The Arabian Nights as much as any work created the category now known as & world literature. The lively and lucid essays in Scheherazades Children explore the fascination and influence The Nights have exerted in various cultures and the books sometimes surprising and often amusing metamorphoses.

A.S. Jawad:
The Arabian Nightsis one of a kind in leaving a lasting mark on various fields of knowledge, including art, theater, screen, and literature. Until the appearance of the Arabian Nights, no mythical character had captured such wide and global attention as Scheherazade, with her wit, intelligence, and courage. The work, like its evolving tales, continues to generate scholarly studies and diverse cultural work of merit. Kennedy and Warner have put together such a book.Scheherazade's Childrenprovides a solid testimony to the power of this fascinating world classic, which transcends countries, languages, and cultures. The 18 essays, all by renowned scholars, explore compelling topics that will help anyone delve into the secret world of imagination that the Arabian Nightsinitiated. The extensive examination of the different translations of the Nightsis impressive and illuminating: it prepares readers of this book to make their choice from the myriad of renderings to build their own appreciations and evaluations. And the volume's scholarly analyses will further the reader's understanding and enjoyment of a classic work. This volume will enchant readers across all disciplines.Summing Up: Highly recommended.

Roz Kaveney:
It is almost impossible now for Western writing not to draw on the Nights. This collection is a call to us to go back to that most wonderful of books, Alf layla wa-layla, and read and reread it endlessly, and learn from it as equals.

Roger Allen, University of Pennsylvania:
[T]he two editors, both of them well established figures in their relative fields, have done excellent work in producing a volume that has its own internal logic . . . The contributions to this volume are all, by any yardstick one may wish to apply, superb essays in cultural studies, and, in many cases comparative literature studies. A distinguished contribution to Arabian Nights studies.

Patricia Storace:
[A] splendid recently published anthology.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xv
Introduction Philip F. Kennedy and Marina Warner Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part I: Translating
1. The Sea-Born Tale Eighteenth-Century English Translations of The Thousand and One Nights and the Lure of Elemental Difference Ros Ballaster Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
2. Re-Orienting William Beckford: Transmission, Translation, and Continuation of The Thousand and One Nights Laurent Châtel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	53
3. The Collector of Worlds Richard Burton, Cosmopolitan Translator of the Nights Paulo Lemos Horta Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	70
Part II: Engaging
4. The Porter and Portability Figure and Narrative in the Nights Elliott Colla Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	87
5. The Rings of Budur and Qamar al-Zaman Wendy Doniger Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	108
6. White Magic Voltaire and Galland’s Mille et une nuits Roger Pearson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	127
7. The Arabian Nights and the Origins of the Western Novel Robert Irwin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	143
8. “A Covenant for Reconciliation” Lane’s Thousand and One Nights and Eliot’s Daniel Deronda Paulo Lemos Horta Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	154
9. Translating Destiny Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s “Tale of the 672nd Night” Dominique Jullien Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	172
10. Borges and the Missing Pages of the Nights Philip F. Kennedy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	203
11. The Politics of Conversation Denis Diderot, Elio Vittorini, Manuel Puig, Masaki Kobayashi, Vasily Grossman Katie Trumpener Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	226
12. Sindbad the Sailor: Textual, Visual, and Performative Interpretations Ferial J. Ghazoul Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	259
Part III: Staging
13. The Arabian Nights in British Pantomime Karl Sabbagh Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	279
14. The Arabian Nights in Traditional Japanese Performing Arts Yuriko Yamanaka Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	290
15. “Nectar If You Taste and Go, Poison If You Stay” Struggling with the Orient in Eighteenth-Century British Musical Theater Berta Joncus Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	298
16. Scheherazade, Bluebeard, and Theatrical Curiosity Elizabeth Kuti Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	338
17. The Takarazuka Revue and the Fantasy of “Arabia” in Japan Tetsuo Nishio Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	363
18. Thieves of the Orient The Arabian Nights in Early Indian Cinema Rosie Thomas Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	378
Afterword My Arabian Superheroine Alia Yunis Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	411
List of Stories Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	417
Selected Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	425
About the Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	445
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	451

Language: English
Publisher: New York University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;

eBook

Published: November 8, 2013
ISBN: 9781479837922