I thought the overall basis for the tale of One Thousand and One Nights was intriguing. The thought of one person telling a series of stories over the course of 1001 nights (close to 3 years) fascinates me. The introduction story The Story of King Shahryar and His Brother sets the scene for the remainder of the book. Both brothers catch their wives cheating, and kill them, and Shahryar, in response to all this, marries a virgin every night and kills her the following morning. Soon there are no virgins left and the daughter of his close advisor is used as his next victim. Instead she tells a story every night, concluding with a cliff hanger, forcing him to keep her alive for another day. What I find humerus is that he, who doesn't trust women, is in fact being outsmarted by one :)
I also found it interesting that both of the wives cheated with a "blackamoor". It would be curious to know if the kings would have responded differently to these situations, had the women involved themselves in affairs with Caucasian men instead. While the act itself is still wrong, I do believe that the kings would have looked down with less disdain, had the wives stuck to a similar race.
One of the other stories I choose to read was The Christian King's Daughter and the Moslem. This story was a bit confusing and the language was a little more difficult to understand than the other stories, but from what I understand, the Moslem traveler is able to heal the daughters ailment, but she dies while they make a pilgrimage to Mecca, where she is able to pray and fast.
The next story I read was The Three Unfortunate Lovers. I actually really enjoyed this story, and it had a romantic circular flow. The 3 young lovers all faces a sudden death, starting with one, and the other two pine away at the loss of love.
The Third story was the Tale of the Trader and the Jinni. This was a bit broken up because there are 4 separate parts to the story, but a Jinni takes a wealthy merchant's soul on the basis that the merchant killed the Jinni's son, and plans to kill him only allowing him the opportunity of one year to settle his final affairs. Each of the Shaykh's he meets before his death want part of his blood. It was a little confusing, but and interesting tale.
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3 comments:
I agree with you Heather that the tale of the Jinni was an interesting story but I was too confused by it. Also, you are right the King is being fooled by the woman or is he, maybe he just likes her company and is letting her stick around just for the sake of telling him stories.
My version of the king.
woman, sleep, kill, woman, sleep, kill,lunch, woman, sleep, kill. For the new woman, who tells the story... woman, miss 1001 nights of sleep, sleep for multiple days, and virgins around the city rejoyce. End of story. lol.
It was a bit confusing; I had to read it twice. Then, when I did, the explanation you gave in class made much more sense.
I do there seems to be a strong homo-erotic dimension to the story, with the one girl loving the other girl. I a really curious how many more tales there are in the _Arabian Nights_ with this kind of theme!
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