Work for Thursday – Thousand and One Nights

For Thursday’s class, I would like you to do two things:

• Please read “The Story of King Shahrayar and Shahrazad.” PDF under Readings.
• Sign up for one of the topics below (with hypothes.is–two students per topic) and write a 2-paragraph post explaining what it is. You can use the sources at the bottom of this post or do your own research online (don’t just use Wikipedia though, and cite your sources).   

Situating the text:

 

Alf Layla Wa-Layla

 

Abbasid Caliphate

 

Harun Al-Rashid

 

Frame Tale (genre)

 

Jinn / Genie / Demon

 

Antoine Galland

 

Aladdin

 

Ali Baba

 

Orient

 

Occident

 

Edward Said’s Orientalism

Sources:

Here are some online sources you can use. There’s much more out there; feel free to browse but please always check a site’s reliability and relevance by looking at who wrote it, what kind of information is on it, and how well it documents its sources.

• Tales from the 1001 Nights (contains many images and tales from 5 different translations)

• Cornell U, Sir Richard Burton’s translation, The Arabian Nights (1850)

• BBC Radio 4, In Our Time,  discussion of The Arabian Nights (2007)

• Annenberg Learner, Resources for The Thousand and One Nights (This website includes timelines, videos, a glossary, and audio of leading scholars discussing the text. Make sure you check this site!)

• Dwight Reynolds, “The Thousand and One Nights: A History of the Text and its Reception,” chapter 12 in Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period, eds. Roger Allen and D.S. Richards (Cambridge UP: 2006). Pdf: Dwight Reynolds, Thousand and One Nights