The Thousand and One Nights: Unique Tales
The Thousand and One Nights and Arabian Nights comes in the Middle Eastern and Western origin. The stories gathered from different cultures in India, China, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, and Greece. The Thousand and One Nights and Arabian Nights give triumph to fables bring heroes and heroines with moral lesson to life. “King Shahryar and his brother, Shahzaman believe women are treacherous” (Byatt, 1). “This led Sultan with every new wife to be executed by the next morning “(Byatt, 1). Until Shahryar married Shahrazade this man’s mind and heart begin to change with her 1,001 nights of stories. The tales will explore aspects similarities personality of the characters, comparison Western and Eastern stories, and moral message helps the reader to understand the purpose. “The Thousand and One Nights” and “Arabian Nights” have attach similar traits to each
…show more content…
“The Merchant and the Demon,” shows Eastern culture a pattern in its simplest form” (Gerhardt, 16). “An old demon went to kill the merchant to avenge his son’s death “(Zott, Pg. 3). This tale describe the pain of losing someone close and the agony struggled down the wrong path. “Lady Doorkeeper” is a pure Eastern Baghdadian short story of the married life” (Gerhardt, 19). “The demoness is summoned, removed the spell off two sisters and they returned to human shape will marrying the mendicants “(Gerhardt, 19). This writer compares the tale to marriage with understand and challenges to make happy ending. “The Thousand and One Nights” and “Arabian Nights” focuses on manuscript history of tales and the structure and narrator technique “(Zott, 4-5). “These tales influence the classical European traditions in the stories this impact the Eastern and Western literature and culture” (Zott, 4-5). The variety stories have bring meaning to this world with moral understanding the
For a reader who is trying to find a genuine understanding of the different cultures and societies around the world, the passages, “The Endless Hunt” and “Weird Karma” might not be a reliable source to refer to. In these narratives, the narrators describe personal experiences traveling to different parts of the world, which thus provides the readers a depiction of these places through their perspective. However, because the reader’s understanding of these environments are only given through the narrators’ insights, the cultures are not always accurately presented. The narrators in these texts distort the credibility of their narratives by providing misleading depictions of these areas that stray from the reality of their experience.
Literature is the key to our world or language. Many writers have emerged from this subject such as Homer who wrote The Odyssey and Euripidies who wrote about the evil Medea. Also mentioned in this paper are the Thousand and One Arabian Nights which is a collection of folktales and stories that are compiled into one. Each of these works of literature has a woman character that has many similarities in solving their problems. In The Odyssey the woman character that will be in comparison is Penelope which is Odysseus’s wife. In the story of Medea, Medea is of course the character we will be discussing and Shaharazad is the woman character from the Thousand and One Arabian Nights that will also be in comparison. Each of these women find themselves in a particularly “sticky situation.” However, Penelope, Medea, and Shahrazad are three strong women whose perseverance and cleverness help them to attain their goals.
Joyce, James. "Araby." Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers. Eds. John Clifford and John Schilb. Boston: Bedford, 1999. 728-32.
Due to traditional stereotypes of women, literature around the world is heavily male-dominant, with few female characters outside of cliché tropes. Whenever a female character is introduced, however, the assumption is that she will be a strong lead that challenges the patriarchal values. The authors of The Thousand and One Nights and Medea use their female centered stories to prove their contrasting beliefs on the role of women not only in literature, but also in society. A story with a female main character can be seen as empowering, but this is not always the case, as seen when comparing and contrasting Medea and The Thousand and One Nights.
Jerome Clinton’s article The madness and cure in the 1001 nights is intended to look at the psychoanalytic side of king Shahriyar’s problem with females and the way Shahrazard uses her wit and the art of story telling to stop her husbands murderous rampage. Clinton uses a female’s perspective on how the stories are viewed instead of the male’s perspective. Clinton also argues that the actions of king shahriyar are not just a brazen result both his brother’s and his own wives infidelity. Clinton uses the idea that king Shahriyar and his brother Shazaman have lost the “anima” in their subconscious mind because they have grown up in a world that gives women no importance but only to please men (Clinton 491-492). Therefore both are unable to form positive lasting relationships with women in their adult lives.
Throughout history, women were not always well regarded by men. Because of this, most societies treated their women as second class citizens. The stories from, Tales from the Thousand and One Nights, illustrate how the portrayal of women affected Muslim society in the Ninth century. Sometimes women were seen as mischievous, unfaithful temptresses. Other times they were depicted as obedient, simple minded slaves looking to please their master. With the use of charm, sex and trickery, they used the labels that they were put in, to their advantage; demonstrating that women during this century were clever, smart, and sly.
Khaled Hosseini, author of A Thousand Splendid Suns, is indisputably a master narrator. His refreshingly distinctive style is rampant throughout the work, as he integrates diverse character perspectives as well as verb tenses to form a temperament of storytelling that is quite inimitably his own. In his novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, he explores the intertwining lives of two drastically different Afghani women, Lailia and Mariam, who come together in a surprising twist of fate during the Soviet takeover and Taliban rule. After returning to his native Afghanistan to observe the nation’s current state amidst decades of mayhem, Hosseini wrote the novel with a specific fiery emotion to communicate a chilling, yet historically accurate account of why his family was forced to flee the country years ago.
Haddawy, Husain. The Arabian Nights. Rpt in Engl 123 B16 Custom Courseware. Comp. Lisa Ann Robertson. Edmonton, AB: University of Alberta, 2014. 51-64. Print.
... subjects such as literature, medicine, and philosophy. By knowing all this, Shahrazad is able to come up with a brilliant plan and uses it in a cunning way so that she is able to convince the king to cease killing the women. By use of sexual advancements, sly stories, and the help of her sister, Dinarzad, she is able to successfully follow through with her plan. A main factor driving her is her compassion and drive to help other people in need. The Thousand and One Nights is an intriguing story that will keep readers on their toes, and like King Shahrayar, keep coming back for the rest of the story.
Although “Araby” is a fairly short story, author James Joyce does a remarkable job of discussing some very deep issues within it. On the surface it appears to be a story of a boy's trip to the market to get a gift for the girl he has a crush on. Yet deeper down it is about a lonely boy who makes a pilgrimage to an eastern-styled bazaar in hopes that it will somehow alleviate his miserable life. James Joyce’s uses the boy in “Araby” to expose a story of isolation and lack of control. These themes of alienation and control are ultimately linked because it will be seen that the source of the boy's emotional distance is his lack of control over his life.
In the famous novel and movie series, Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, an average teenage girl, Bella Swan, is forced to move from Arizona (where she lived with her mother) to Washington to start an almost new life with her father. She attends a small-town high school with mostly average people, besides one family, the Cullens. As Bella and Edward Cullen get closer, she uncovers a deep secret about him and his family. Their relationship faces many hard challenges and conflicts as the story develops. Both the novel and movie share very similar storylines, however, differ in many ways. From themes to author’s craft, or to relationships, these important parts of the story highlight the significant differences and similarities of Twilight.
Stories like Sindbad, Aladdin and the Magic Lamp and other popular stories are very common today in the western culture. Animated movies were also made for the entertainment of kids on these popular stories. One might wonder that where these stories originated and how it came down and made place in the western culture. Although these stories are very popular in both the western culture and the eastern culture but the original literary work is not so popular in common people. Theses stories are some of the stories from the Arabic work "The Thousand and One Nights." The work of "The Thousand and One Nights" represents basically a female that is a strong and clever idol and continuously imaginative and creative. It is an anonymous work which is widely known in the Arab world. It is an Arabic collection of a thousand tales, which is derived from the Persian version, telling of a King who was in the habit of killing his wives after the first night, and who was led to abandon this practise by the cleverness of the Wezir's daughter, who nightly told him a tale which she left unfinished at dawn, so that his curiosity led him to spare her till the tale should be completed. Many people have written about these stories, that where they originated, what time period was it originated, how they have been changed, and also literary criticism of the work.
Throughout “Araby”, the main character experiences a dynamic character shift as he recognizes that his idealized vision of his love, as well as the bazaar Araby, is not as grandiose as he once thought. The main character is infatuated with the sister of his friend Mangan; as “every morning [he] lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door…when she came on the doorstep [his] heart leaped” (Joyce 108). Although the main character had never spoken to her before, “her name was like a summons to all [his] foolish blood” (Joyce 108). In a sense, the image of Mangan’s sister was the light to his fantasy. She seemed to serve as a person who would lift him up out of the darkness of the life that he lived. This infatuation knew no bounds as “her image accompanied [him] even in places the most hostile to romance…her name sprang to [his] lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which [he] did not understand” (Joyce 109). The first encounter the narrator ex...
James Joyce’s “Araby” and the story of “A & P” by John Updike have many characteristic similarities as well as literary traits. These stories focus on a young man trying to learn the difference between the romantic fantasies that play in their mind and the bitterness that reality can bring to a young man. In both stories a young man has built an unrealistic expectation of women only to meet the tragic despair of being rejected by the object of their boyish fantasy. In both of these stories the authors choose to show that life is not always what it may always appear.
Haddawy, Husain, Muhsin Mahdi, and Daniel Heller-Roazen. The Arabian Nights. New York: W. W. Norton, 2010. Print.