Produktdetaljer
Biographical note
Husain Haddawy was born and grew up in Baghdad, taught English and comparative literature at various American universities, wrote art criticism, and is now living in retirement in Thailand. Daniel Heller-Roazen is the Arthur W. Marks ’19 Professor of Comparative Literature and the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University. He is the author of The Enemy of All: Piracy and the Law of Nations; The Inner Touch: Archaeology of a Sensation, awarded the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literature Studies in 2008; Echolalias: On the Forgetting of Language; and Fortune’s Faces: The Roman de la Rose and the Poetics of Contingency. He has published articles on classical, medieval, and modern literature and philosophy and has edited, translated, and introduced Giorgio Agamben’s Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy. Heller-Roazen’s books have been translated into many languages."A fine new translation. Bawdy, colloquial and wondrously inventive."
- Michiko Kakutani - New York Times,
"Easily the clearest, most fluent and readable translation."
- A. S. Byatt - Sunday Times [London],
"The resourceful Shahrazad has never been more entertaining than in this fresh and vigorous version of this immortal book."
- Doris Lessing - The Independent,
"A distinguished new translation."
- Edward Said - The Nation,
"Indispensable. Not a new version of an old favorite, but a work we’ve never known."
- Geoffrey O'Brien - Voice Literary Supplement,
“Contexts” presents three of the oldest witnesses to The Arabian Nights in the Arabic tradition, together in English for the first time: an anonymous ninth-century fragment, Al Mas‘udi’s Muruj al-Dhahab, and Ibn al-Nadim’s The Fihrist. Also included are three related works by the nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers Edgar Allan Poe, Marcel Proust, and Taha Husayn.
“Criticism” collects eleven wide-ranging essays on The Arabian Nights’ central themes by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Josef Horovitz, Jorge Luis Borges, Francesco Gabrieli, Mia Irene Gerhardt, Tzvetan Todorov, Andras Hamori, Heinz Grotzfield, Jerome W. Clinton, Abdelfattah Kilito, and David Pinault.
A Chronology of The Arabian Nights and a Selected Bibliography are also included.
A Note on the Text
The Text of The Arabian Nights
1. Foreword
2. Prologue
3. [The Story of King Shahrayar and Shahrazad, His Vizier's Daughter]
4. [The Tale of the Ox and the Donkey]
5. [The Tale of the Merchant and His Wife]
6. [The Story of the Merchant and the Demon]
7. [The First Old Man's Tale]
8. [The Second Old Man's Tale]
9. [The Tale of King Yunan and the Sage Duban]
10. [The Tale of the Husband and the Parrot]
11. [The Tale of the King's Son and the She-Ghoul]
12. [The Tale of the Enchanted King]
13. [The Story of the Porter and the Three Ladies]
14. [The First Dervish's Tale]
15. [The Second Dervish's Tale]
16. [The Tale of the Envious and the Envied]
17. [The Third Dervish's Tale]
18. [The Tale of the First Lady, the Mistress of the House]
19. [The Tale of the Second Lady, the Flogged One]
20. [The Story of the Three Apples]
21. [The Story of the Two Viziers, Nur al-Din Ali al-Misri and Bar al-Din Hasan al-Basri]
22. [The Story of the Hunchback]
23. [The Christian Broker's Tale: The Young Man with the Severed Hand and the Girl]
24. [The Steward's Tale: The Young Man from Baghdad and Lady Zubaida's Maid]
25. [The Tailor's Tale: The Lame Young Man from Baghdad and the Barber]
26. [The Tale of the Second Brother, Baqbaqa the Paraplegic]
27. [The Tale of the Fifth Brother, the Cropped of Ears]
28. [The Story of Jullanar of the Sea]
29. [The Story of Sindbad the Sailor]
Contexts
Early Witnesses
Anonymous • A Ninth-Century Fragment of the Thousand Nights
Al Mas'ûdi • Meadows of Gold (Murûj al-Dhahab)
Ibn Ishâq Al-Nadîm • The Fihrist
Modern Echoes
Edgar Allan Poe • The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade
Marcel Proust • From Remembrance of Things Past
Taha Husayn • From The Dreams of Scheherazade
Criticism
Hugo von Hofmannsthal • A Thousand and One Nights
Josef Horovitz • The Origins of The Arabian Nights
Jorge Luis Borges • The Translators of The Thousand and One Nights
Francesco Gabrieli • The Thousand and One Nights in European Culture
Mia Irene Gerhardt • From The Art of Story-Telling
Tzvetan Todorov • Narrative Men
Andras Hamori • A Comic Romance from The Thousand and One Nights: The Tale of Two Viziers
Heinz Grotzfeld • Neglected Conclusions of The Arabian Nights
Jerome W. Clinton • Madness and Cure in the 1001 Nights
Abdelfattah Kilito • The Eye and the Needle
David Pinault • Story-Telling Techniques in The Arabian Nights
The Arabian Nights: A Chronology
Selected Bibliography