The Thousand and One Nights and Twentieth-Century Fiction

Intertextual Readings
Erscheinungsjahr 2020
ISBN: 978-90-04-43866-8
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, 832 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 1138 g

It is gradually being acknowledged that the Arabic story-collection Thousand and One Nights has had a major influence on European and world literature. This study analyses the influence of Thousand and One Nights, as an intertextual model, on 20th-century prose from all over the world. Works of approximately forty authors are examined: those who were crucial to the development of the main currents in 20th-century fiction, such as modernism, magical realism and post-modernism. The book contains six thematic sections divided into chapters discussing two or three authors/works, each from a narratological perspective and supplemented by references to the cultural and literary context. It is shown how Thousand and One Nights became deeply rooted in modern world literature especially in phases of renewal and experiment.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Leeuwen, Richard van

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturen sonstiger Sprachräume Literatur des Nahen Ostens & Nordafrikas
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Rezeption, literarische Einflüsse und Beziehungen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments

Introduction
The Thousand and One Nights
Incorporation into World Literature
This Study

Part 1 Enclosures, Journeys, and Texts

1 Enclosures, Letters, and Destiny: Hugo von Hofmannsthal and André Gide
Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the Kunstmärchen, and Orientalism
The Contingency of Fate: André Gide’s Les faux-monnayeurs

2 Going Home: Al-Tayyib Salih and Ibrahim al-Faqih
Season of Migration to the North and the Thousand and One Nights
The Forbidden Room: The Thousand and One Nights and Ibrahim al-Faqih’s Gardens of the Night

3 Writing and Enclosures: Michel Butor and Abilio Estévez
The Portrait of an Author: Michel Butor’s Portrait de l’artiste comme jeune singe
Imprisoned Imagination: Abilio Estévez
Conclusions to Part 1

Part 2 Capturing the Volatility of Time

4 The Return of Time: Marcel Proust and Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar
Proust and the Thousand and One Nights
Times of Life and Society: Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar

5 Narration and Survival: Vladimir Nabokov and Margaret Atwood
Nabokov, the Thousand and One Nights, and Life After Death
Narrating Against Death: Margaret Atwood

6 Desire Unbound: The Marquis de Sade and Angela Carter
Angela Carter: The Feminist-Narrative Complex

7 Temporal Dystopias: Botho Strauss and Haruki Murakami
War and the Re-invention of Time: Botho Strauss’s Der junge Mann
Haruki Murakami and the Constraints of Time
Conclusions to Part 2

Part 3 The Textual Universe

8 The Celebration of Textuality: James Joyce and the Argentine (post-)Modernists
The Thousand and One Nights and the Textuality of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake
Textual Worlds: Fernández, Arlt, Borges, and Piglia

9 Stories Without End: Italo Calvino and Georges Perec
Italo Calvino and Narration: If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller … and the Thousand and One Nights
Georges Perec: The Imperative of Form

10 The Celebration of Hybridity: Abdelkébir Khatibi and Juan Goytisolo
Abdelkébir Khatibi: Narration and the Body
Juan Goytisolo: Hybridity as a Refuge
Conclusions to Part 3

Part 4 Narrating History

11 The Traumas of History: William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, and André Brink
Form
History
Absalom, Absalom! and the Thousand and One Nights
The Haunted House: Toni Morrison’s Beloved and André Brink’s Imaginings of Sand

12 The Enchantment of History: Gabriel García Márquez and Salman Rushdie
Gabriel García Márquez and One Hundred Years of Solitude
Salman Rushdie: History Gone Awry

13 Words Against Death: Roberto Calasso, David Grossman, and Elias Khoury
Roberto Calasso: The Ruin of Kasch
David Grossman: Fighting the Nazi Beast
Violence and the Boundaries of Narrativity: Elias Khoury’s Yalo
Conclusions to Part 4

Part 5 Identifications, Impersonations, Doubles: The Discontents of (post-)Modernity

14 Aladdin’s Nightmare: Henrik Pontoppidan and Ernst Jünger
The Curse of Aladdin: Henrik Pontoppidan
The City of Brass, Aladdin, and the Discontents of Modernity: Ernst Jünger

15 The Sindbad Syndrome: Gyula Krúdy and John Barth
Gyula Krúdy: The Nostalgic Nomad
The Intrepid Traveler: John Barth

16 The Mock Caliph: H. G. Wells, Arthur Schnitzler, and Orhan Pamuk
A Modern Harun al-Rashid: H. G. Wells’s The Research Magnificent
Arthur Schnitzler’s Der Traumnovelle
The Writer and His Double: Orhan Pamuk’s The Black Book

17 The Multiple Faces of Shahrazad: Leïla Sebbar and Waçini Laredj
Leïla Sebbar: Shérézade
Waçini Laredj: Les ailes de la reine
Conclusions to Part 5

Part 6 Aftermaths: The Delusions of Politics

18 The 1002nd Night: Tawfiq al-Hakim, Taha Husayn, and Naji Mahfuz
Tawfiq al-Hakim: Shahrazad
Taha Husayn: The Dreams of Shahrazad
Najib Mahfuz: The Predicament of Shahriyar

19 Fabrications of Power: Hani al-Rahib and Rachid Boudjedra
The Curse of Repression: al-Rahib’s Alf layla wa-laylatan
A False Utopia: Rachid Boudjedra

20 The Secret Lives of Sindbad: Mostafa Nissaboury and Bahram Beyzaï
Mostafa Nissaboury: Shahrazad’s Suffering
Sindbad’s Return: Bahram Beyzaï
Conclusions to Part 6

Conclusion
The Narrative Universe of Paul Auster
The Framework: The Invention of Solitude
The Locked Room
Doubles
Narrativity

Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Richard van Leeuwen, Ph.D. (1992) University of Amsterdam, is senior lecturer in Islamic Studies at that university. He has published widely on the history of the Middle East, Arabic literature, and Islam, and is also a translator of Arabic literature. His publications include Notables and Clergy in Mount Lebanon (Brill 1994); Waqfs and Urban Structures (Brill 1999); (2004; The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia, 2 vols. (Santa Barbara 2004; with U. Marzolph); The Thousand and One Nights: space, travel and transformation (2007) and Narratives of Kingship in Eurasian Empires, 1300-1800 (Brill 2017).