Talk:One Thousand and One Nights

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Edward William Lane NOT the last word on "nights" scholarship. Quite a lot has happened since he passed away.

To cavalierly dismiss all research since the 1870s - on this or any other subject - is probably not vrey encyclopedic. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 03:11, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

This is a classic strawman. The following passage needs a reference: "Most scholars agreed that the Nights was a composite work and that the earliest tales in it came from India and Persia"

According to this source, there is a debate to whether or not the tales had a Persian or Indian origin. What is not debated is that the majority of the stories are Arab.

Not a strawman at all, classic or otherwise, in fact in is very far from being exaggerated - a simple statement of the intent and effect of the original edit. The very dated (and doubtful) authority of Lane (who produced one of the early English versions, and died in 1875) contributes nothing worthwhile in any contemporary sense to the textual history of the Nights, as now understood by most scholars. The argument for better citation can often be justified, and the article may well be improved by extra references, but please read everything the article has to say on this subject before setting up your own "strawmen" - the article is already fairer than you seem to think - the Arab origin of many of the stories is already very specifically admitted; the ambiguity of presumed Persian and Indian origins is also pointed out. A good reference, incidentally - should be to a specific statement (on a stated page of the text cited) that actually directly supports the argument - not a vague "this writer seems overall to agree with me about this". --Soundofmusicals (talk) 12:47, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Indeed. Lane has long been superseded in this area by more recent scholarship. --Folantin (talk) 13:37, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Reference

questions regarding the r.f. burton translation, the b.a. cerf selection and the "Egyptian recension"

I have two questions regarding the r.f. burton translation, the b.a. cerf selection and the "Egyptian recension":

"The first European version (1704–1717) was translated into French by Antoine Galland from an Arabic text of the Syrian recension and other sources. This 12-volume work ... included stories that were not in the original Arabic manuscript. "Aladdin's Lamp" and "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" (as well as several other, lesser known tales) appeared first in Galland's translation and cannot be found in any of the original manuscripts. ... As scholars were looking for the presumed "complete" and "original" form of the Nights, they naturally turned to the more voluminous texts of the Egyptian recension, which soon came to be viewed as the "standard version". The first translations ... and then by Sir Richard Francis Burton..."

now amazon says about the burton-translation, that it contains the stories that Galland seems to have added (see below). so one must conclude that the "Egyptian recension" contains the Galland-version... can this be right? and if so, how did it get there? back-translation?

(http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/0812972147?keywords=one%20thousand%20and%20one%20nights&qid=1442962946&ref_=sr_1_1&s=books-intl-de&sr=1-1

The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights (Modern Library Classics) (Englisch) Taschenbuch – 1. Juni 2004 von A.S. Byatt (Einleitung), Richard Burton (Übersetzer)

"This volume reproduces the 1932 Modern Library edition, for which Bennett A. Cerf chose the most famous and representative stories from Sir Richard F. Burton's multivolume translation, and includes Burton's extensive and acclaimed explanatory notes. These tales, including Alaeddin; or, the Wonderful Lamp, Sinbad the Seaman and Sinbad the Landsman, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves...")

and finally - if I may -: how much (%) and what did Bennett A. Cerf omit? does the text lose authenticity for a connaisseur?

thanks! --HilmarHansWerner (talk) 00:13, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

From my reading of the article it seems pretty clear that Galland's additional stories were not from either the "Egyptian", nor the "Syrian" versions, both of which are entirely in Arabic. The two "recensions" differ, especially in the number of stories they contain - in fact different manuscripts are also inconsistent. Galland's so-called "orphan" tales, however, are the ones not sourced to ANY Arabic manuscript. Existing Arabic versions of Aladdin, for instance, are generally believed to be translations of Galland's French! Exactly where Galland's stories originally came from is problematic - he claimed to have taken them down from a middle-eastern story teller and then translated them into French, in the same way as he translated the "main" text - less than charitable critics have even suggested he made them up himself to string the book out a bit and add interest (it has to be said that many of the original tales have limited appeal for Western readers, or modern Eastern ones for that matter). No one seriously supposes that "Galland's orphans" are an authentic part of the Nights - they usually appear in modern editions, but more out of tradition and habit than anything else. Sir Richard Burton' translation uncritically included Galland's additions, and also added authentic Arabic literature (Sinbad, for instance) that no one had previously associated with the Nights, but significantly, a lot of this added material he assigned to "supplementary" volumes rather than the main set covering the "authentic" part based on the original Arabic.

Which translation to read? If you are a native French speaker, I believe that Galland himself has been admired as a writer, and that his version of the Nights is a French classic. Of early English translations, Burton's has been admired as literature in its own right - although much of the "Arabic flavour" is just Burton being flowery rather than especially "authentic". Or there are a number of more accurate modern translations available. If you're seriously interested I suggest you try reading whatever you can get hold of! If you have access to Bennett A. Cerf and Burton you might try doing your own comparisons? --Soundofmusicals (talk) 02:11, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm not an expert, but I'll add: My sense is that virtually no editions or translations of the Nights have any very good claim to "authenticity" because of the haphazard ways in which they were all cobbled together -- so in general, the best criterion is probably one's personal preference for the style of the translator. The exception seems to be the Muhsin Mahdi edition of 1984. This has been translated into English by Husain Haddawy in 1990, and possibly into other languages as well. (Haddawy's introduction includes a brief but useful history of versions, as well as a critique, with examples, of the translations of Lane, Payne, and Burton.) The catch is that what makes Mahdi's edition "authentic" -- other than emendations and lacunae it is based solely on a 14th-century Syrian ms -- makes it exclude many of the most popular tales: Alladin, Ali Baba, Sinbad, etc., because these were evidently later additions. But it might be argued that the "authentic" Nights is an evolving collection that retains some impression of each of the meddling hands that have touched it over the last thousand years. In that case, the sprawling Egyptian versions (and Galland, Burton, and the rest) are the real thing.

Regarding Cerf's 1932 selection, while I see that it boasts a hefty 823 pages, it is no match for Burton's 16 volumes of about 5,000 - 6,000 pages (my bargain reprint of Payne weighs in at just over 2,000). Any way you slice it, Cerf's done a lot of selecting. However with Burton there was a lot of padding ... and you have to ask yourself, do you really want to read 6,000 pages of anyone's translation? Phil wink (talk) 05:22, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Origins of the 1001 Nights Stories

It's obvious from the names of the characters and the language of the stories that they all originated from the old Persian empire to the Arab caliphates thru narrations by the storytellers as Arabs did't know how to read Persian literature.Later they were translated to Arabic by the Persians who were hired by the caliphates and the original book destroyed just like many other Persian books that were burned or destroyed after the take over by the Arabs.In fact in the book itself these stories are narrated by a story teller named Shahrzad (Persian name for ladies) who was trying to buy her life back by extending the number of the nights she was given by the caliphate before being beheaded.I don't know of any Arabic literature before the invasion of Persia other than Quran which has stories in it and of course those stories are from the bible.

Not that simple at all. Read the article. The frame story has no direct connection with any of the tales - the basic idea of a king's concubine telling stories to postpone her execution seems to be taken from an Indian collection of stories, and in the book itself the king is called a "Sasanian king" (OK, that much is "Persian") ruling in "India and China". Macbeth is set in Scotland, Hamlet in Denmark and Romeo and Juliet in Italy. Rather knocks your "obvious" on the head, but they're all by (the same) English person. Where a story is set has no bearing on where it originated. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 22:33, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Supplemental Nights, Baghdad Edition

I changed the "six" to "seven" as the number of volumes in the Supplement. I own an unnumbered copy of the "Baghdad Edition" (1000 impressions), and it has 7 numbered physical volumes in the Supplement, even though internally they're a little goofy.

In physical volume 3, stamped as such on the spine and listed as such in the title page, Burton complains in his foreword that his planned sequence has been completely "dislocated" by the Curators of the Bodlean, and says the whys and wherefores will be explained in due time. The TOC is for volume 3, but it lists more stories than the body of the volume actually contains.

In physical volume IV, stamped and titled as such, he goes straight into the tales with no TOC or Foreward. It turns out that this physical volume is the second part of the 3rd logical volume, with The Caliph's Night Adventure being the first story. It's unclear whether this is the result of the "dislocation". It might be something the printer did, so that the vol III would not stand out in the bookcase by being twice as thick as any of the others.

Physical volumes V, VI, and VII, stamped and titled as such, are logical volumes IV, V, and VI. 98.118.17.62 (talk) 18:47, 2 March 2016 (UTC)