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The Arabian Nights in Historical Context: Between East and West by
Alf layla wa layla (known in English as A Thousand and One Nights or The Arabian Nights) changed the world on a scale unrivalled by any other literary text. The appearance of Antoine Galland's twelve-volume Mille et Une Nuits in English translation (1704-1717), closely followed by the Grub Street English edition, introduced the text into European circulation. Over a period of some three hundred years following itseighteenth-century translation into French and English, a chain of editions, compilations, translations, and variations circled the globe to reveal the absorption of The Arabian Nights into English, French, Arabic, and Latin American literature. This collection of essays by noted scholars from 'East', 'West', and in-between reassesses theinfluence of the Nights in Enlightenment and Romantic literature, the nature of 'Orientalism', and the text's vigorous after-life in the contemporary Arabic novel. The volume concludes with an extensive bibliography of scholarship on The Arabian Nights and lists editions.
Call Number: OnlinePublication Date: 2009
Representations of the Orient in Western Music: Violence and Sensuality by
This book focuses on the cultural, political and religious representations of the Orient in Western music. Dr Nasser Al-Taee traces several threads in a vast repertoire of musical representations, concentrating primarily on the images of violence and sensuality. Al-Taee argues that these prevailing traits are not only the residual manifestation of the Ottoman threat to Western Europe, but also the continuation of a long and complex history of fear and fascination towards the Orient and its Islamic religion. In addition to analyses of musical works, Al-Taee draws on travel accounts, paintings, biographies, and political events to engage with important issues such as gender, race, and religious differences that may have contributed to the variously complex images of the Orient in Western music. The study extends the range of Orientalism to cover eighteenth-century Austria, nineteenth-century Russia, and twentieth-century America. The book challenges those scholars who do not see Orientalism as problematic and tend to ignore the role of musical representations in shaping the image of the Other within a wider interdisciplinary study of knowledge and power.
Call Number: Music Library Stacks ML193 .A37 2010Publication Date: 2010
Marvellous Thieves: Secret Authors of the Arabian Nights by
Although many of its stories originated centuries ago in the Middle East, the Arabian Nights is regarded as a classic of world literature by virtue of the seminal French and English translations produced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Supporting the suspicion that the story collection is more Parisian than Persian, some of its most famous tales, including the stories of Aladdin and Ali Baba, appear nowhere in the original sources. Yet as befits a world where magic lamps may conceal a jinni and fabulous treasures lie just beyond secret doors, the truth of the Arabian Nights is richer than standard criticism suggests. "Marvellous Thieves, which draws on hitherto neglected sources, is a brilliant, fluent and original work of literary scholarship." --Robert Irwin, Literary Review "This fine book...cogently probes an influential period in the knotted and at times sordid history of the Arabian Nights, serving as a fine example to those unraveling this promiscuous and forever malleable set of stories." --Charles Shafaieh, Wall Street Journal "Intelligent and engrossing...The great merit of Horta's book is that its interest always lies in the story of the story, in mapping out the complex network of the translators, editors and travellers behind the Arabian Nights, in ways that enrich our sense of this remarkable text." --Shahidha Bari, Times Higher Education
Call Number: OnlinePublication Date: 2017
Audio/Video:
- In Our Time podcast (The Arabian Nights) Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Arabian Nights - an ever shifting sea of stories across Asia and Europe.
- Music & Performing Arts (Audio & Video Collections) This link opens in a new window Music & Performing Arts' collections include American Music, Classical, Contemporary World, Jazz, Popular, Smithsonian's Global Sound, Ethnographic Sound Archives, American Film Scripts, Asian American Drama, Black Drama, North American Drama, and Theatre in Context. Search results include links to the full text of the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Online (1997-2001), with additional audio examples.
