The thousand and one nights

M. S. Mahdi

BRILL, 1995 - Literary Criticism - 277 pages

Almost three centuries have passed since the oldest manuscript of The Thousand and One Nights arrived in Europe. Since then, the Nights have occupied the minds of scholars world-wide, in particular the questions of origin, composition, language and literary form.In this book, Muhsin Mahdi, whose critical edition of the text brought so much praise, explores the complex literary history of the Nights, bringing to fruition the search for the archetype that constituted the core of the surviving editions, and treating the fascinating story of the growth of the collection of stories that we now know as The Thousand and One Nights.

Contents

• Antoine Galland and the Nights: 11
• Gallands Successors: 51
• 18141843: 87
• THREE INTERPRETATIONS: 127
• NOTES ON REFERENCE STYLE: 181
• REFERENCES: 263
• CONTENTS: 270

Popular passages

Page 274 - Payne. (Tales from the Arabic of the Breslau and Calcutta (1814-18) editions of the Book of the Thousand Nights and one Night, not occurring in the other printed texts of the work..‎

Page 275 - La colombe, messagère plus rapide que l'éclair, plus prompte que la nue par Michel Sabbagh.‎

About the author

Muhsin S. Mahdi is the James R. Jewett Professor Emeritus of Arabic in the Department of Near Eastern languages and Civilization, Harvard University. He has published the critical Arabic editions of many of Alfarabi's works, as well as the definitive edition of the "Thousand and One Nights" and a pathbreaking study of Ibn Khaldun's philosophy of history.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The thousand and one nights
• Author: M. S. Mahdi
• Publisher: BRILL, 1995
• ISBN: 9004102043, 9789004102040
• Length: 277 pages
• Subjects: Architecture / Interior Design / General; Literary Criticism / Middle Eastern; Social Science / Folklore & Mythology