250 word summary

Prose literature / Early novels

· The Thousand and One Nights is typically characterized as a frame story, or "a story within a story." Think on how the narrator (Shahrazad) tells a story, and then the characters in her stories tell more stories... Each story is "framed" by the story preceding it

· The Thousand and One Nights is also prose fiction, which is normal writing in the shape of sentences and paragraphs. The "fiction" part of the term just means that it's about made-up stuff! 

· Frame stories and prose fiction belong to the novel genre, though some literary historians disagree on whether or not The Thousand and One Nights counts as a novel

· One problem is... Many histories of the novel trace its roots to England and Europe more generally, which of course ignores writing in other parts of the world

· This Eurocentric belief also discredits a great deal of literary genres

· Like prose fiction dating before the 18th century, including  Don Quixote (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. ,  Tale of Genji (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. , ancient Greek ( Callirhoe  (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.) and Roman novels ( The Golden Ass  (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. ;  The Satyricon  (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. ); and...

· A genre called romances ( Amadis de Gaula  (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.).

· In a literary sense, romances are not "love stories"; the term romance refers to a literary genre that has a mystery, adventure, or spiritual quest for its plot. It also involves a quest that centers on the characters' values or bravery

· Consider the above in light of our world literature course--do groups of people "claim ownership" of famous stories or genres? Does "owning" a famous story make a culture or nation seem "more cultured"? Do you think The Thousand and One Nights is a novel? Why or why not?

Invention of the West

· The Thousand and One Nights has a complicated translation and distribution history, which makes a discussion of the term orientalism useful

· Orientalism is a term invented by Edward Said in his eponymous book. It is "a system (of texts, movies, images, etc) which together reinforce a way of understanding the Middle East through a very Eurocentric lens, through which the 'other' is exoticized in inaccurate and ahistorical ways" (" Orientalism: Reading Others (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. " from the Center for the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin, Madison)

· Let's unpack the term by, first, watching the short video clip below 

· The main idea or concept is that orientalism is a way of seeing "the other,"  particularly through a European lens. One side effect is that "Oriental people" are seen in an inaccurate or "not real" way. 

· For example: "The man is depicted as feminine, weak, yet strangely dangerous because his sexuality poses a threat to white, Western women. The woman is both eager to be dominated and strikingly exotic. The Oriental is a single image, a sweeping generalization, and a stereotype that crosses countless cultural and national boundaries" (" Orientalism (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. " from Emory University)

· Consider "The Story of the Merchant and the Demon" on pp 1187-97 of Norton, with an eye to how men and women are characterized

· The problem is that, as The Thousand and One Nights became translated from Persian or Arabic into French and English, the French and English translations tended to focus on the exotic, or exoticized the stories outright --> the effect was to make people living in countries like Iran or Egypt seem "less than"

· Watch this short excerpt from the opening song in Disney's Aladdin

· Now that you've watched it--think about how the Middle East is being characterized. Is it filtered through an oriental lens?