The Arabian Nights in Transnational Perspective

At a meeting sponsored by UNESCO at the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbuttel, Germany, nineteen international scholars presented their work on the transnational aspects of the ""Arabian Nights"". This volume collects their papers, whose topics range from the history of the ""Arabian Nights"" manuscripts, to positioning the Nights in modern and postmodern discourse, to the international reception of the Nights in written and oral tradition.Essays are arranged in five sections. The first section contains essays on Galland's translation and its ""continuation"" by Jacques Cazotte. The second section treats specific characteristics of the ""Nights"", including manuscript tradition, the transformations of a specific narrative pattern occurring in the ""Nights"" and other works of medieval Arabic literature, the topic of siblings in the ""Nights"", and the political thought mirrored in the ""Nights"". The essays in the third section deal with framing in relation to the classical Indian collection Panchatantra and as a general cultural technique, with particular attention to story-telling in the oral tradition of the Indian Ocean islands off the African coast. The two concluding and largest sections focus on various aspects of the transnational reception of the ""Nights"".While the essays of the fourth section predominantly discuss written or learned tradition in Hawai'i, Swahili-speaking East Africa, Turkey, Iran, German cinema, and modern Arabic literature, the fifth section encompasses essays on the reception and role of the ""Nights"" in the oral tradition of areas as wide apart as Sicily, Greece, Afganistan, and Balochistan. A preface by Ulrich Marzolph unifies this volume.In view of the tremendous impact of the ""Arabian Nights"" on Western creative imagination, this collection will appeal to literary scholars of many backgrounds.