Ulrich Marzolph - Böcker

The Arabian Nights commands a place in world literature unrivaled by any other fictional work of ""Oriental"" provenance. Bringing together Indian, Iranian, and Arabic tradition, this collection of tales became popular in the Western world during the eighteenth century and has since exerted a profound influence on theater, opera, music, painting, architecture, and literature. ""The Arabian Nights Reader"" offers an authoritative guide to the research inspired by this rich and intricate work. Through a selection of sixteen influential and currently relevant essays, culled from decades of scholarship, this volume encompasses the most salient research topics to date, from the ""Nights'"" early history to interpretations of such famous characters as Sheherazade. While serious research on the ""Nights"" began early in the nineteenth century, some of the most puzzling aspects of the collection's complex history and character were solved only quite recently. This volume's topics reflect the makings of a transnational narrative: evidence of a ninth-century version of the ""Nights"", the work's circulation among booksellers in twelfth-century Cairo, the establishment of a ""canonical"" text, the sources used by the French translator who introduced the ""Nights"" to the West and the dating of this French translation, the influence of Greek literature on the ""Nights"", the genre of romance, the relationship between narration and survival within the plots, reception of the ""Nights"" from the nineteenth century onward, interpretations of single stories from the collection, the universal nature of the sexual politics surrounding Sheherazade, and the repercussion of the ""Nights"" in modern Arabic literature. As this collection demonstrates, the ""Arabian Nights"" helped shape Western perceptions of the ""Orient"" as the quintessential ""Other"" while serving to inspire Western creativity. The research presented here not only deepens our insight into this great work, but also heightens our awareness of the powerful communal forces of transnational narrative.

At a meeting sponsored by UNESCO at the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbuttel, Germany, nineteen international scholars presented their work on the transnational aspects of the ""Arabian Nights"". This volume collects their papers, whose topics range from the history of the ""Arabian Nights"" manuscripts, to positioning the Nights in modern and postmodern discourse, to the international reception of the Nights in written and oral tradition.Essays are arranged in five sections. The first section contains essays on Galland's translation and its ""continuation"" by Jacques Cazotte. The second section treats specific characteristics of the ""Nights"", including manuscript tradition, the transformations of a specific narrative pattern occurring in the ""Nights"" and other works of medieval Arabic literature, the topic of siblings in the ""Nights"", and the political thought mirrored in the ""Nights"". The essays in the third section deal with framing in relation to the classical Indian collection Panchatantra and as a general cultural technique, with particular attention to story-telling in the oral tradition of the Indian Ocean islands off the African coast. The two concluding and largest sections focus on various aspects of the transnational reception of the ""Nights"".While the essays of the fourth section predominantly discuss written or learned tradition in Hawai'i, Swahili-speaking East Africa, Turkey, Iran, German cinema, and modern Arabic literature, the fifth section encompasses essays on the reception and role of the ""Nights"" in the oral tradition of areas as wide apart as Sicily, Greece, Afganistan, and Balochistan. A preface by Ulrich Marzolph unifies this volume.In view of the tremendous impact of the ""Arabian Nights"" on Western creative imagination, this collection will appeal to literary scholars of many backgrounds.

Contributes to the history of Middle Eastern narrative lore and its impact on Western tradition.

Against the methodological backdrop of historical and comparative folk narrative research, 101 Middle Eastern Tales and Their Impact on Western Oral Tradition surveys the history, dissemination, and characteristics of over one hundred narratives transmitted to Western tradition from or by the Middle Eastern Muslim literatures (i.e., authored written works in Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish).For a tale to be included, Ulrich Marzolph considered two criteria: that the tale originates from or at least was transmitted by a Middle Eastern source, and that it was recorded from a Western narrator's oral performance in the course of the nineteenth or twentieth century. The rationale behind these restrictive definitions is predicated on Marzolph's main concern with the long-lasting effect that some of the "Oriental" narratives exercised in Western popular tradition - those tales that have withstood the test of time, Marzolph focuses on the originally "Oriental" tales that became part and parcel of modern Western oral tradition.Since antiquity, the "Orient" constitutes the quintessential Other vis-á-vis the European cultures. While delineation against this Other served to define and reassure the Self, the "Orient" also constituted a constant source of fascination, attraction, and inspiration.Through oral retellings, numerous tales from Muslim tradition became an integral part of European oral and written tradition in the form of learned treatises, medieval sermons, late medieval fabliaux, early modern chapbooks, contemporary magazines, and more. In present times, when national narcissisms often acquire the status of strongholds delineating the Us against the Other, it is imperative to distinguish, document, visualize, and discuss the extent to which the West is not only indebted to the Muslim world but also shares common features with Muslim narrative tradition.101 Middle Eastern Tales and Their Impact on Western Oral Tradition is an important contribution to this debate and a vital work for scholars, students, and readers of folklore and fairy tales.

Against the methodological backdrop of historical and comparative folk narrative research, 101 Middle Eastern Tales and Their Impact on Western Oral Tradition surveys the history, dissemination, and characteristics of over one hundred narratives transmitted to Western tradition from or by the Middle Eastern Muslim literatures (i.e., authored written works in Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish).For a tale to be included, Ulrich Marzolph considered two criteria: that the tale originates from or at least was transmitted by a Middle Eastern source, and that it was recorded from a Western narrator's oral performance in the course of the nineteenth or twentieth century. The rationale behind these restrictive definitions is predicated on Marzolph's main concern with the long-lasting effect that some of the "Oriental" narratives exercised in Western popular tradition-those tales that have withstood the test of time. Marzolph focuses on the originally "Oriental" tales that became part and parcel of modern Western oral tradition. Since antiquity, the "Orient" constitutes the quintessential Other vis-á-vis the European cultures. While delineation against this Other served to define and reassure the Self, the "Orient" also constituted a constant source of fascination, attraction, and inspiration.Through oral retellings, numerous tales from Muslim tradition became an integral part of European oral and written tradition in the form of learned treatises, medieval sermons, late medieval fabliaux, early modern chapbooks, contemporary magazines, and more. In present times, when national narcissisms often acquire the status of strongholds delineating the Us against the Other, it is imperative to distinguish, document, visualize, and discuss the extent to which the West is not only indebted to the Muslim world but also shares common features with Muslim narrative tradition.101 Middle Eastern Tales and Their Impact on Western Oral Tradition is an important contribution to this debate and a vital work for scholars, students, and readers of folklore and fairy tales.

Western tales of the marvelous and the strange have dominated much of the narrative literatures of the premodern Muslim world. The quintessential collection, The Thousand and One Days, was first published in the early eighteenth century by French Orientalist scholar François Pétis de la Croix. Research has found that The Thousand and One Days actually had an earlier start, as it is an adapted translation of a fifteenth-century, anonymous, Ottoman Turkish collection titled Relief after Hardship, which is, in turn, the enlarged translation of an equally anonymous Persian collection of tales that likely dates back to as early as the thirteenth century.Ulrich Marzolph now provides a detailed assessment of the Ottoman Turkish compilation and its Persian precursor. Based upon Andreas Tietze’s unpublished German translation of the Ottoman Turkish Ferec ba'd es-sidde, it traces the origins of the collection’s various tales in premodern Persian and Arabic literatures and its impact on Middle Eastern and world tradition and folklore. As the concept of "relief after hardship" has the same basic structure as the European fairy tale, Marzolph contends that the early reception of these tales from Muslim narrative tradition might well have had an inspiring impact on the nascent genre of the European fairy tale as we know it today.

A new History of Persian Literature in 18 Volumes. Persian literature is the jewel in the crown of Persian culture. It has profoundly influenced the literatures of Ottoman Turkey, Muslim India and Turkic Central Asia and been a source of inspiration for Goethe, Emerson, Matthew Arnold and Jorge Luis Borges among others. Yet Persian literature has never received the attention it truly deserves. A History of Persian Literature answers this need and offers a new, comprehensive and detailed history of its subject. This 18-volume, authoritative survey reflects the stature and significance of Persian literature as the single most important accomplishment of the Iranian experience. It includes extensive, revealing examples with contributions by prominent scholars who bring a fresh critical approach to bear on this important topic. This companion volume deals with two of the most under-researched areas of study in the Modern Iranian field: the Persian oral and popular literature of Iran, Tajikistan and Persian-speaking Afghanistan on the one hand; and the written and oral literatures of the Kurds, Pashtuns, Baloch and Ossetians on the other.