Arabic folktales dates back to more than hundred years ago. It first started in the form of storytelling and the person narrating is called (hakwaty) in Arabic. Most of these stories represents different cultures and the original author or the first person who told the stories remains unknown. All these popular stories are collected in a book called One Thousand and One Nights where different tales from all middle eastern cultures are accumulated by different historians, authors, translators and scholars. The book got translated to many different languages and it was made popular by a French writer called Antoine Galland where he heard it when he was in Syria. The title changed multiple times such as; The Nights and Arabian Nights. Some of …show more content…
Arabs, middle eastern or Orientals are always portrayed in one stereotypical way. It started in the 18th century when European colonized the east and they interacted with the Orients and observed the way the live. Edward Said, a Palestinian –American professor and literary theorist, stated in his popular book Orientalism that “European culture gained strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self.” (3) He then goes on describing Orientalism by saying “Orientalism depends for its strategy on this flexible positional superiority, which puts the westerner in a whole series of possible relationships with the Orient without ever losing him the relative upper hand.” (7) He gave many definitions to the theory in his book and one of these definitions …show more content…
“A line is drawn between two continents. Europe is powerful and articulate; Asia is defeated and distant.” (57) This artificial boundary creates the concept of us and them or ours and theirs. Ours refer to the west which they are civilized and modern, while theirs refer to the orient which they are uncivilized and not modern. The Europeans define themselves by defining the orient, whatever the orient does the occident does not. Like for example the orient are irrational so the occident became
Argo, a movie about the Iran-American conflict of 1979, is primarily set in the Middle East where all the inhabitants are wrongly depicted as full of mindless rage, screaming, irrational, and reasonless mobs. In 1891, French economist and journalist, Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, stated about the colonies of the Orient “a great part of the world is inhabited by barbarian tribes or savages, some given over to wars without end and to brutal customs, and others knowing so little of the arts and being so little accustomed to work and to invention that they do not know how to exploit their land and its natural riches. They live in little groups, impoverished and scattered.” Argo having strikingly similar depictions of Eastern people over a hundred years later raises the question “has the Western perspective of the East changed?”
The religion of Islam is unique and has origins similar to that of Christianity and Judaism. Muslims, those who follow the religion of Islam, trace their lineage back to Ishmael who was the son of Abraham. However, the teachings and religious texts of Islam come from Muhammad who received from God, Allah, from the angel Gabriel. These religious texts are called the Qur’an. Tales from 1,001 Nights is a novel that was influenced by Islam and portrays Islamic values. Similar to Christianity and Judaism, Islam is a monotheistic religion who believes in the same God that Christians and Jews believe in. Islam does not believe in a messiah or a holy spirit. Muslims only recognize as their being one sole god they call Allah. Monotheism is the cornerstone
Sabbagh, S. J., & American Arab Anti Discrimination Committee, W. C. (1990). Sex, Lies, & Stereotypes: The Image of Arabs in American Popular Fiction. ADC Issue Paper No. 23. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Orientalism is the way that the Middle East is depicted by its’ friendly acquaintances over in the West. In other terms, it is a “racist discourse which constructs the orient for Western aggrandizement.” The way that the Afghans are depicted in the film alongside Rambo makes the audience sympathize with them. The little boy also looks up to Rambo. He looks up to him a masculine father-figure. Using th...
It is often said that history is written by the victor, and in the race to industrialization of the past two centuries, Western Europe and the United States have emerged as the victors. This enabled them to write a history in which their rise to power was preordained and inevitable and in which Eastern cultures are viewed as backward and intolerant. These Eurocentric histories have so fully permeated the global psyche that the stereotypes they have perpetuated inform our cultural interactions to this day. However, an unbiased look at the premodern history of Asia and the Middle East reveals the inaccuracy of the Eurocentric paradigm. Contrary to the Eurocentric view, there is nothing inherently intolerant about Islam or Middle Eastern and East Asian culture. In fact, many of the societies that have existed in the East have been extraordinarily tolerant and heterogeneous.
Kitab alf laylah wa-laylah (One Thousand and One Nights) is a collection of West and South Asian stories and folk tales written in Arabic during the ‘Islamic Golden Age’ In English, the Tales are known as the ‘Arabian Nights’.
This is a response to the video The Thousand and One Nights. The Thousand and One Nights is a book of stories. One of the main characters in the story was Scheherazade. Scheherazade is queen, storyteller, the wife of Shahryar, and the daughter of Vizier. The premise of the story is when faced with a challenge, for things to change sometimes someone has to step up and do something different.
In Orientalism, Edward Said claims that, “as much as the West itself, the Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the West” (5). The complex network of political, economical, academic, cultural, or geographical realities of the Orient called “Orientalism” is a way of coming to terms with the Orient, or to be less geographically specific, the Other. Although Said defines Orientalism to be specifically Franco-British experience in the Arab world, his basic arguments can be applied to the process of Othering in a more general sense. Especially his idea of “representation” plays a central role in the epistemology of Orientalism.
The performative aspect of language conceptualised by Austin half a century ago, enables a more nuanced approach to the statement ‘The Middle East is an Invention’ than a simple examination whether it is true or false. It implies the necessity of an examination that takes into consideration its possible meanings and their historical origins. Moreover, such an action has its political implications. These can become visible if such an argument is considered in contrast to its historical counterpart that presupposes that the term ‘Middle East’ contains an essence of some sort and as such it can be definitely analysed to its components. Comprehended in that manner, the claim that the Middle East is a fictitious artefact is first and foremost a critique.
In the book, A Thousand and One Nights, I was able to perceive the anger the men in the readings hold against women, specifically their wives. The women hold this power to them, that they are able to win the hearts of men, but eventually do something to anger them. The women have this way of persuading the men to have sex with them, or do another favor, but the women cast a spell if they are not pleased.
When a person becomes trapped in a situation that stems from an individual with greater authority, being manipulative can be a very promising method to escape. The Thousand and One Nights does a very good job of being a good example of someone in this situation that uses stories within a story to capture encapsulate the attention of the reader. Despite the many little stories that go into the text, the main story behind it all is about a king named King Shahrayar and how he goes insane after catching his wife having sexual relations with a slave. After he sees this happen, he realizes that he can never trust any woman again and none of them are trustworthy. By expressing his views on women, he decides to marry a different woman every night, then the next morning have them killed by beheading. This is an ongoing event that brings death to most of the women in the village. Soon after, the king’s Vizier’s daughter, Shahrazad, came up with a brilliant idea that will end up saving her fellow countrywomen and hopefully keep the king from murdering so many innocent people. Her method behind all this is by telling the kind a different story every night that leaves him on a cliffhanger, making him curious enough to keep her alive for another day to continue her story. Shahrazad keeps herself spared from the king because of her cunning, and compassionate personality.
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.
Orientalism as termed by Edward Said is meant to create awareness of a constellation of assumptions that are flawed and underlying Western attitudes towards the Muslim societies. Evidence from his 1978 book “Orientalism”, states that the culture has been of influence and marred with controversy in post colonial studies and other fields of study. Moreover, the scholarship is surrounded by somehow persistent and otherwise subtle prejudice of Eurocentric nature, which is against Islam religion and culture (Windschuttle, 1999). In his book, Said illustrates through arguments, that the long tradition in existence containing romanticized images of Islamic stronghold regions i.e. Middle East, and the Western culture have for a long time served as implicit justifications for the European and American Imperial ambitions. In light of this, Said denounced the practice of influential Arabs who contributed to the internalization of Arabic culture ideas by US and British orientalists. Thus, his hypothesis that Western scholarship on Muslim was historically flawed and essentially continues to misrepresent the reality of Muslim people. In lieu to this, Said quotes that, “So far as the United States seems to be concerned, it is only a slight overstatement to say that Muslims and Arabs are essentially seen as either oil suppliers or potential terrorists. Therefore, very few details such as human density, the passion of Arab-Muslim life has entered the awareness of even the people whose profession revolve around reporting of the Arab world. Due to this, we have instead a series of crude, essentialized caricatures of the Islamic world presented in such a way as to make that world vulnerable to military aggression” (Said, 1980).
Gradually, despite their many internal differences, the countries of Western Europe began to conceive of themselves as a single civilization, known as the West (Hall and Gieben 1992:289). The challenge from Islam was an important factor in shaping Europe and developing the idea of the West. Europe’s cultural identity was originally characterized by religion and civilisation, eventually, Europe developed a sharper geographical, political and economic definition; closer to the modern secular concept of the West (Hall and Gieb...
The concept of orientalism refers to the western perceptions of the eastern cultures and social practices. It is a specific expose of the eurocentric universalism which takes for granted both, the superiority of what is European or western and the inferiority of what is not. Salman Rushdie's Booker of the Bookers prize winning novel Midnights Children is full of remarks and incidents that show the orientalist perception of India and its people. It is Rushdie's interpretation of a period of about 70 years in India's modern history dealing with the events leading to the partition and beyond. Rushdie is a fantasist and a creator of alternate realities, the poet and prophet of a generation born at the degree zero of national history. The present paper is an attempt to study how Salman Rushdie, being himself a writer of diasporic consciousness, sometimes perceives India and its people as orientalist stereotypes and presents them in a derogatory manner.