Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights

Download or read book Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights written by David Pinault and published by BRILL. This book was released on 1992 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work comprises a literary comparison of surviving alternative versions of selected narrative-cycles from the "Nights." Pinault draws on the published Arabic editions - especially Bulaq, MacNaghten, and the fourteenth-century Galland text recently edited by Mahdi - as well as unpublished Arabic manuscripts from libraries in France and North Africa. The study demonstrates that significantly different versions have survived of some of the most famous tales from the "Nights." Pinault notes how individual manuscript redactors employed - and sometimes modified - formulaic phrases and traditional narrative topoi in ways consonant with the themes emphasized in particular versions of a tale. He also examines the redactors' modification of earlier sources - Arabic chronicles and Islamic religious treatises, geographers' accounts and medieval legends - for specific narrative goals. Comparison of the narrative structure of diverse story-collection also sheds new light on the relationship of the embedded subordinate-narrative to the overarching frame-tale. All cited passages from the "Nights" and other Arabic story- collections have been fully translated into English.