The True Story of the Novel (2): The Greek and Roman Novel

Apuleius: Asinus aureus

As well as specifying one crucial text from each tradition which you really should read in order to appreciate the myriad possibilities of the novel form, I've decided that it's probably a good idea to recommend at least one useful critical book as well. For the Eastern frame-story, the essential reading was (of course) The Thousand and One Nights themselves, while the critical text was Andras Hamori's On the Art of Medieval Arabic Literature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974).

For the classical novel, I've selected The Golden Ass, Being the Metamorphoses of Lucius Apuleius - with John J. Winkler's Auctor & Actor: A Narratological Reading of Apuleius's Golden Ass (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985) serving as the most ingenious reading of Apuleius' text I've encountered to date.

John J. Winkler: Auctor & Actor (1985)

However, like (I suspect) quite a number of other readers, I have to confess that my first acquaintance with Apuleius came via a battered second-hand copy of Robert Graves's 1950 Penguin Classics translation:

Apuleius: The Golden Ass (1950)

Wow, what a book! Talk about sex and violence! When I first came across it, some time in my teens, I could hardly believe how racy and modern it seemed. Since then I've consulted (and collected) a lot of other editions and translations:

Lucius Apuleius (c.125–c.180 AD)


1. Apuleius, Lucius. The Golden Ass, Being the Metamorphoses of Lucius Apuleius. Trans. W. Adlington. Rev. S. Gaselee. Loeb Classical Library. London & New York: William Heinemann & The Macmillan Company, 1915. [dual text: Latin & English]


2. Apuleius, Lucius. The Works of Apuleius, Comprising the Metamorphoses, or Golden Ass, The God of Socrates, the Florida, and His Defence, or a Discourse on Magic. A New Translation. To Which are Added. a Metrical Version of the Cupid and Psyche and Mrs. Tighe’s Psyche, a Poem in Six Cantos. Bohn’s Libraries. London: George Bell & Sons, 1893. [Literal translation]


3. Apuleius, Lucius. The Golden Ass of Apuleius. Trans. William Adlington. 1566. London: John Lehmann, 1946. [The standard translation in English]


4. Apuleius, Lucius. The Transformations of Lucius, Otherwise Known as The Golden Ass. Trans. Robert Graves. Penguin Classics. 1950. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1950.


5. Apuleius, Lucius. The Golden Ass. Trans. Jack Lindsay. Indiana University Greek and Latin Classics. 1960. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1962.


6. Apuleius, Lucius. The Transformations of Lucius, Otherwise Known as The Golden Ass. Trans. Robert Graves. 1950. Rev. Michael Grant. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990.


7. Apuleius, Lucius. The Golden Ass. Trans. P. G. Walsh. The World’s Classics. 1994. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.


8. Apuleius, Lucius. The Golden Ass, Or Metamorphoses: A New Translation. Trans. E. J. Kenney. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1998.


9. Winkler, John J. Auctor & Actor: A Narratological Reading of Apuleius's Golden Ass. 1985. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991.


10. Manara, Milo & Lucius Apuleius. Les Métamorphoses de Lucius. Paris: L’Echo des Savanes/ Albin Michel, 2007.

It's a bit hard to go past Graves's, though. While he doesn't really do justice to the tortuous complexities of Apuleius' prose style, it's doubtful that any translation into modern English could and still remain readable. Drastically abridged and simplified though it is, one might perhaps regard Milo Manara's graphic novel version of Apuleius' Metamorphoses as a kind of visual companion to Graves. Here's his rendition of Lucius' crucial transformation scene (the servant-girl Photis has stolen the wrong vial of ointment from her mistress, the witch Pamphile, so instead of turning Lucius into a bird, instead he is in the process of becoming an ...)

Milo Manara: Les Métamorphoses de Lucius (2007)

And here's a slightly more decorous version of the same scene, from a late eighteenth-century French translation of the same book (I think you can also see how this scene influenced Shakespeare's magical translation of Bottom into an ass in A Midsummer Night's Dream):

J. F. Bastien: L’âne d’or (1787)

I guess the really interesting thing (to me) about Apuleius' masterpiece is the fact that how we read it depends very much on which literary era we happen to inhabit. St. Augustine of Hippo (as I mentioned in my previous post) saw it as a confession of his sins by his fellow North African Lucius Apuleius - who had indeed been accused of witchcraft and a lack of sexual scrupulosity (i.e. seducing a rich widow) during his youth, and had been forced to defend himself (at great length) against these charges in court. Augustine accordingly used it as a model for his own Confessions, which culminate with a similar conversion scene.

In the eighteenth century, it was seen instead as a somewhat risqué romance: along the lines of Gil Blas or other picaresque tales of adventure. There was even a (very popular) rewritten version designed to compare and contrast Apuleius' versions of the "floating world" of the Imperial underclass with their Enlightenment equivalents:

Charles Gildon: The New Metamorphosis (1708)

One of the later editions of this work even had illustrations by Hogarth.

William Hogarth: The New Metamorphosis (1724)

Robert Graves was (allegedly) introduced to the work by his friend T. E. Lawrence, who (again allegedly) kept a copy of it in his saddlebags all through the Arab revolt. Certainly his translation must have seemed like a breath of fresh air in the stultifying 1950s: the kind of book one always wished the Ancients would have written ...

It also had the crucial advantage of being complete. The only other existing Latin novel, Petronius' Satyricon, is little more than a collection of fragments - admittedly every bit as titillating and sexually frank as Apuleius, but somehow lacking his charm - particularly such interpolated tales as the "Cupid and Psyche" story which occupies most of the middle section of the latter's narrative.

Fellini: Satyricon (1969)

Gaius Petronius Arbiter (c.27–66 AD)


1. Petronius. Satyricon. Trans. Michael Heseltine. Seneca. Apococyntosis. Trans. W. H. D. Rouse. 1913. Rev. E. H. Warmington. 1969. Loeb Classics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005.


2. Petronius. The Satyricon of T. Petronius Arbiter (Burnaby’s Translation, 1694). Introduction by C. K. Scott Moncrieff. The Abbey Classics. London: Remainder Centre, Ltd., n.d.


3. Petronius. Satyricon. Trans. Paul Dinnage. 1953. Ed. Costas Panayotakis. Wordsworth Classics of World Literature. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth, 1999.


4. Petronius. The Satyricon. Trans. William Arrowsmith. 1959. A Mentor Classic. New York: New American Library, 1960.


5. Gillette, Paul. Satyricon: Memoirs of a Lusty Roman. A reconstruction in Modern English of the Classic Novel of Imperial Age Rome, The Satyricon of Titus Petronius Arbiter. Los Angeles, CA: Holloway House, 1965.


6. Petronius. The Satyricon and The Fragments. Trans. John Sullivan. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965.


7. Petronius Arbiter. Satyrica. Trans. Frederick Raphael. London: the Folio Society, 2003.


8. Walsh, P. G. The Roman Novel. 1970. London: Bristol Classical Press, 1995.

Fellini: Capucine [Germaine Lefèvre]

Probably the most familiar version of this is Federico Fellini's 1969 film, which certainly does full justice to the more decadent and pornographic elements of Petronius's satire. Whether there was more to the original novel or not is anyone's guess, unfortunately. We probably have less than half of the original text to judge from.

A kind of sea-change in reactions to Apuleius seems to have coincided with the growth of postmodernism in fiction. The fact that his story is not at all original (it's based on an earlier Greek novel, which survives - possibly only in summary form - as Lucius or the Ass, attributed to Lucian of Samosata, a contemporary of Apuleius, itself conjectured to have been based on an earlier version by a certain Lucius of Patrae, its author and protagonist) had new resonance in an age of adaptations and retellings of "originals" (Joyce's Ulysses, among many others). The religious aspects of his novel, too, seemed less perfunctory and more worthy of analysis in the age of Jung. There were various new readings which saw it as a kind of embodiment of the Eleusinian Mysteries, or some other of the mystery religions of late Antiquity.

Lucius re-transforms (1345)

Winkler's book, cited above, situates Apuleius firmly in the poststructuralist era. Above all, he makes great play with the fact that the book has an entirely different resonance for a first-time reader (who is encouraged it as a rather amoral and decadent adventure story - up until the very end, that is, when the apparently sincere conversion scene takes place), and the repeat reader, who is forced to look for clues and prefigurings of this dénouement, and is thus caught in a complex of net of textual ironies and self-contradictions. Gérard Génette's classic work on Narrative Discourse (1972) is brought into play, with its multiple levels of implied narrative, and the whole thing starts to sound very self-conscious and intentional indeed.

Winkler cites, on p.vii of his analysis, an very important point from Frank Kermode:

For the traditionalist in us all I would recall Frank Kermode's words: "what we are learning about narrative may be, in a sense, new, but narrative was always potentially what we have now learned to think it, in so far as our thinking is right." [Novel and Narrative, W. P. Ker Memorial Lecture 24 (Glasgow, 1972): 6]

Is our thinking on these matters "right"? Who can say? But I'm afraid that the days of reading Apuleius as a naive, semi-autobiographical wordsmith are long over. They can't stop his book from being lots of fun, though. If you like that kind of thing, that is.

•

B. P. Reardon, ed.: Collected Ancient Greek Novels (1989)

If you don't like that kind of thing - if you find the classical Roman novel a bit too much like Fellini's films: decadent, depraved, overlong, and packed to the gills with mostly irrelevant detail, there's always the Greek novel instead.

Most of these are pretty violent and sexy too, admittedly, but there's a certain sentimentality about them which shades them into something a bit more digestible for the more squeamish palate. The book above, which contains translations of all the classical texts which might qualify as "novels" (including "The Ass") is probably the best place to start.

Unless, of course, you'd rather just read the best of them on its own: some would call that the Aethiopica (it's certainly the longest), but I greatly prefer the most famous of them all: Longus's Daphnis and Chloe. There are a few scenes of rape and violence within it , admittedly, but for the most part it's a delightful tale of young love in a pastoral setting: The Blue Lagoon in Arcadia.

There just isn't enough space here to go into detail about all of them, but I would certainly recommend part one of Margaret Doody's The True Story of the Novel (1996) if you want an especially ingenious and comprehensive reading of the whole group. They're clearly rather more to her taste than the Latin novels she also discusses, and since my inclinations are in the opposite direction, this is one more reason to recommend her book!

Ravel: Daphnis and Chloé

Greek Fiction [c.7th century BCE to 4th century CE] (chronological):

1. Aesop (c.620-564 BCE): Fables
2. Pseudo-Callisthenes (c.360-328 BCE): The Alexander Romance
3. Chariton: Callirhoe (mid-1st century)
4. Achilles Tatius: Leucippe and Clitophon (early 2nd century)
5. Longus: Daphnis and Chloe (2nd century)
6. Lucian of Samosata (c.125-c.180): Lucius, or the Ass
7. Heliodorus of Emesa: Aethiopica (3rd century)
8. Anthologies & Secondary Literature

_________________________________________________________

Aesop (c.620-564 BC)


1. Handford, S. A., trans. Fables of Aesop. Illustrations by Brian Robb. 1954. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973.


2. Aesop. The Complete Fables. Trans Olivia and Robert Temple. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1998.


3. Aesop’s Fables. Illustrated by William K. Plummer / Arabian Nights. Illustrated by Mamoru Funai. Companion Library. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1963.


Pseudo-Callisthenes (c.360-328 BC)


4. Stoneman, Richard, trans. The Greek Alexander Romance. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991.


Longus (c.2nd century AD)


5. Longus. Daphnis & Chloe. Trans. George Thornley. 1657. Introduction by George Saintsbury. The Abbey Classics. London: Simpkin Marshall, n.d.


6. Longus. Daphnis and Chloe. Trans. Paul Turner. 1956. Unexpurgated edition. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968.


7. Longus. The Pastoral Loves of Daphnis and Chloe. Trans. George Moore. Introduciton by Samuel Roth. N.p.: Boar’s Head Books, 1953.


Lucian of Samosata (c.125-c.180)


8. Lucian. Satirical Sketches. Trans. Paul Turner. 1958 & 1961. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968.


9. Lucian. Chattering Courtesans and Other Sardonic Sketches. Trans. Keith Sidwell. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2004.


Heliodorus of Emesa (c.3rd century AD)


10. Heliodorus. An Æthiopian History of Heliodorus (Underdowne’s Translation, 1587). Introduction by George Saintsbury. The Abbey Classics. London: Chapman & Dodd, n.d.


11. Heliodorus. An Æthiopian Romance. Trans. Thomas Underdowne. 1587. Revised and partly rewritten by F. A Wright. Broadway translations. London & New York: George Routledge & E. P. Dutton, n.d.


12. Heliodorus. An Ethiopian Romance. Trans. Moses Hadas. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1957.


Anthologies & Secondary Literature


13. Beaton, Roderick, ed. The Greek Novel AD 1-1985. London: Croom Helm, 1988.


14. Reardon, B. P. ed. Collected Ancient Greek Novels. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989.

•

Lines of Aryan Migration

As for where either (or both) of these traditions began, well, the Latin novel presumably came from the Greek (like its tradition of epic poetry: Virgil from Homer, Horace from Hesiod and the other Greek bucolic poets). The Greek may well have come, by a round-about route, from Ancient Egypt, but there's little direct evidence of this beyond a few repeated motifs and plot devices.

Maybe all of these storytelling cultures come from the same Central Asian, Sanskrit-speaking roots - that was a favourite theory among the nineteenth century diffusionists, at any rate. For myself, I tend to suspect that similar cultural conditions produce similar effects even in completely independent traditions. That's really the point of trying to identify the earlier genres prose fiction may have arisen from in each of the seven traditions I'm looking at, in fact.

Actually it's probably a false dichotomy. There certainly has been a good deal of transmission of cultural freight between India, Persia, the Middle East and Europe over the past couple of millennia. I doubt that it's enough to allow us to postulate a single point of origin for the novel - defined here (for the sake of argument) as "an extended prose fiction incorporating action and character development in varying proportions" - either in Egypt or the Ancient Aryan Highlands of Central Asia ...

Miriam Lichtheim, ed.: Ancient Egyptian Literature (1973)

1. Petrie, Sir Flinders, ed. Egyptian Tales Translated from the Papyri. 1st Series: IVth to XIIth Dynasty. Illustrated by Tristram Ellis. 1895. London: Methuen, 1926.


2. Petrie, Sir Flinders, ed. Egyptian Tales Translated from the Papyri. 2nd Series: XVIIIth to XIXth Dynasty. Illustrated by Tristram Ellis. 1895. London: Methuen, 1926.


3. Wallis Budge, Sir Ernest A., trans. Egyptian Tales and Romances: Pagan, Christian and Muslim. 1931. Keystone Library. London: Thornton Butterworth Ltd., 1935.


4. Lichtheim, Miriam. Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings. 3 vols. Vol. I: The Old and Middle Kingdoms. 1973. Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1975.


5. Lichtheim, Miriam. Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings. 3 vols. Vol. II: The New Kingdom. 1974. Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1976.


6. Lichtheim, Miriam. Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings. 3 vols. Vol. III: The Late Period. 1978. Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1980.

•

Ancient Egyptian Scribe

Famous Seamus: Lament for a Maker

i.m. Seamus Heaney


Bobbie Hanvey: Seamus Heaney

born County Derry, Northern Ireland
13 April 1939
died Dublin, Eire
30 August 2013

I went to a talk by the distinguished Irish writer Dermot Healy recently, while I was at a conference in Singapore. As well as plays, screenplays, and fiction - most famously his haunting and terrifying novel A Goat's Song (1994) - Healy has also published a number of books of poetry. He's a pretty unpretentious sort (in fact, when I last saw him, at the conference dinner, he was trying to imitate Tibetan throat music to an increasingly unenthusiastic throng). One of his quips was that he was getting used to people coming up to him and saying how much his poems meant to them, then producing a copy of Death of a Naturalist for his signature ...

Dermot Healy / Seamus Heaney - the names are not really that similar, but he claimed that he got mistaken for the more famous Seamus on a regular basis, and had in fact taken to signing some of his books simply in order to avoid further explanations.

Famous Seamus - that was his nickname in Ireland, another Irish friend told me. Virtually from the beginning of his career, in the mid-sixties, it was apparent that his was a talent on a different scale from most of his contemporaries. As Gavin Ewart put it, wryly: "I think I'm Auden, he thinks he's Yeats." That was the competition - not the other poets he knew, or (increasingly) that he'd taught at Queen's University in Belfast.

I wrote a fairly long piece about Heaney and his sense of poetic genealogy for a guest lecture I gave to Jo Emeney's somewhat bemused English students at Kristin School in 2010. Not just Yeats, but Homer, Shakespeare - above all, Dante, who inspired his wonderful dream vision Station Island of 1984, and whom he translated piecemeal in various collections throughout his career.

He bore his burden of fame (the Nobel Prize, the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford) with grace, I think. It can't have been easy at times, when each of his pronouncements was taken so seriously, weighed up with such scrupulous attention - particularly as the Troubles dragged on, and he had somehow become the voice of Catholic Northern Ireland itself.

His was a fate rather like Dante's - and Yeats's - then: a partisan political as well as a poetic role to play in the tragi-comedy of late twentieth-century history.

Now all that's over and we can go back to the poetry. A few years ago I bought the recordings he'd made of his entire body of work to date: a 15-CD set which I've listened to a couple of times since then. It's a very different experience from reading the books (I have all of them, as well: the 12 collections, at any rate). His shaping and patterning is so clear on the page. When spoken aloud, the poems become more genial and anecdotal, more like the fragments of a complex life story they were always, I imagine, meant to be.

It seems rather fitting that it was Jo Emeney who sent me a link to an obituary by Colm Tóibín, and thus informed me indirectly of his death yesterday. I don't know quite what to think, actually. He was one of the major shapers of poetry in our time. It seems rather unfair that we should have to part with him so soon. I suppose the true breadth of his work will come into focus now, though - that journey he started on almost fifty years ago.

I'll quote a part of his translation of Canto 1 of Dante's Inferno. It seems to say so much more than I can find to say at this moment:

How I got into it I cannot clearly say
for I was moving like a sleepwalker
the moment I stepped out of the right way,

But when I came to the bottom of a hill
standing off at the far end of that valley
where a great terror had disheartened me

I looked up, and saw how its shoulders glowed
already in the rays of the planet
which leads and keeps men straight on every road.

Then I sensed a quiet influence settling
into those depths in me that had been rocked
and pitifully troubled all night long

And as a survivor gasping on the sand
turns his head back to study in a daze
the dangerous combers, so my mind

Turned back, although it was reeling forward,
back to inspect a pass that had proved fatal
heretofore to everyone who entered.

- from Dante's Inferno: Translations by 20 Contemporary Poets, edited by Daniel Halpern (New York: Ecco Press, 1993)

What more can one say? It comes to us all in the end, that "pass that had proved fatal/ heretofore to everyone who entered" - in Seamus Heaney it took away one of the best and the brightest ... Perhaps one might conclude, instead, with some lines from Dunbar's "Lament for the Makaris":

I se that makaris amang the laif
Playis heir ther pageant, syne gois to graif;
Sparit is nocht ther faculte;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

[I see that makers among the rest
play here their pageant, then go to grief;
their faculty is not exempt;
The fear of death obsesses me].

Seamus Heaney: Collected Poems (2009)

Seamus Justin Heaney
(1939-2013)

Poetry collections:


1. Death of a Naturalist (1966)
   • Death of a Naturalist. 1966. London: Faber, 1969.
2. Door into the Dark (1969)
   • Door into the Dark. 1969. London: Faber, 1985.
3. Wintering Out (1972)
   • Wintering Out. 1972. London: Faber, 1993.
4. North (1975)
   • North. 1975. London: Faber, 1992.
5. Field Work (1979)
   • Field Work. London: Faber, 1979.
6. Station Island (1984)
   • Station Island. 1984. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986.
7. The Haw Lantern (1987)
   • The Haw Lantern. London: Faber, 1987.
8. Seeing Things (1991)
   • Seeing Things. London: Faber, 1991.
9. The Spirit Level (1996)
   • The Spirit Level. London: Faber, 1998.
10. Electric Light (2001)
    • Electric Light. London: Faber, 2001.
11. District and Circle (2006)
    • District and Circle. London: Faber, 2006.
12. Human Chain (2010)
    • Human Chain. London: Faber, 2010.

Selected editions:


13. Selected Poems 1965–1975 (1980)
    • Selected Poems 1965-1975. London: Faber, 1980.
14. New Selected Poems 1966–1987 (1990)
    • New Selected Poems 1966-1987. London: Faber, 1990.
15. Opened Ground: Poems 1966–1996 (1998)
    • Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996. London: Faber, 1998.
16. New Selected Poems 1988–2013 (2014)
    • New Selected Poems 1988-2013. London: Faber, 2014.
17. 100 Poems (2018)

Prose collections:


18. Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968–1978 (1980)
19. The Government of the Tongue (1988)
20. The Redress of Poetry: Oxford Lectures (1995)
    • The Redress of Poetry: Oxford Lectures. 1995. London: Faber, 1996.
21. Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971–2001 (2002)
    • Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971-2001. 2002. London: Faber, 2003.

Plays:


22. The Cure at Troy: A version of Sophocles' Philoctetes (1990)
    • The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles' Philoctetes. London: Faber, in association with Field Day Theatre Company, Derry, 1990.
23. The Burial at Thebes: A version of Sophocles' Antigone (2004)
    • The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone. 2004. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005.

Translations:


24. Sweeney Astray: A version from the Irish (1983)
    • Sweeney Astray. 1983. London: Faber, 1984.
25. Sweeney's Flight. Photographs by Rachel Giese (1992)
26. The Midnight Verdict: Translations from the Irish of Brian Merriman and from the Metamorphoses of Ovid (1993)
27. [with Stanisław Barańczak] Laments, a cycle of Polish Renaissance elegies by Jan Kochanowski (1995)
28. Beowulf: A New Verse Translation (1999)
    • Beowulf: A Verse Translation. 2000. Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Daniel Donghue. New York: W. W. Norton, 2002.
29. Diary of One Who Vanished, a song cycle by Leoš Janáček of poems by Ozef Kalda (1999)
    • Diary of One Who Vanished: A Song cycle by Leos Janacek / Poems by Ozef Kalda. London: Faber, 1999.
30. The Testament of Cresseid & Seven Fables (2009)
31. Aeneid: Book VI (2016)

Chapbooks & Limited editions:


32. Eleven Poems (1965)
33. The Island People (1968)
34. Room to Rhyme (1968)
35. A Lough Neagh Sequence (1969)
36. Night Drive (1970)
37. A Boy Driving His Father to Confession (1970)
38. Explorations (1973)
39. Stations (1975)
40. Bog Poems (1975)
41. The Fire i' the Flint (1975)
42. Four Poems (1976)
43. Glanmore Sonnets (1977)
44. In Their Element (1977)
45. Robert Lowell: A Memorial Address and an Elegy (1978)
46. The Makings of a Music (1978)
47. After Summer (1978)
48. Hedge School (1979)
49. Ugolino (1979)
50. Gravities (1979)
51. A Family Album (1979)
52. Toome (1980)
53. Sweeney Praises the Trees (1981)
54. A Personal Selection (1982)
55. Poems and a Memoir (1982)
56. An Open Letter (1983)
57. Among Schoolchildren (1983)
58. Verses for a Fordham Commencement (1984)
59. Hailstones (1984)
60. From the Republic of Conscience (1985)
61. Place and Displacement (1985)
62. Towards a Collaboration (1985)
63. Clearances (1986)
64. Readings in Contemporary Poetry (1988)
65. The Sounds of Rain (1988)
66. The Dark Wood (1988)
67. An Upstairs Outlook (1989)
68. The Place of Writing (1989)
69. The Tree Clock (1990)
70. Squarings (1991)
71. Dylan the Durable (1992)
72. The Gravel Walks (1992)
73. The Golden Bough (1992)
74. Keeping Going (1993)
75. Joy or Night (1993)
76. Extending the Alphabet (1994)
77. Speranza in Reading (1994)
78. Oscar Wilde Dedication (1995)
79. Charles Montgomery Monteith (1995)
80. Crediting Poetry: The Nobel Lecture (1995)
81. Commencement Address (1996)
82. Poet to Blacksmith (1997)
83. An After Dinner Speech (1997)
84. Audenesque (1998)
85. The Light of the Leaves (1999)
86. Ballynahinch Lake (1999)
87. Something to Write Home About (2001)
88. Towers, Trees, Terrors (2001)
89. The Whole Thing: on the Good of Poetry (2002)
90. Hope and History (2002)
91. A Keen for the Coins (2002)
92. Hallaig (2002)
93. Arion, a poem by Alexander Pushkin, translated from the Russian, with a note by Olga Carlisle (2002)
94. Eclogues in Extremis (2003)
95. Squarings (2003)
96. Anything can Happen (2004)
97. Room to Rhyme (2004)
98. The Testament of Cresseid (2004)
99. Columcille The Scribe (2004)
100. A Tribute to Michael McLaverty (2005)
101. The Door Stands Open (2005)
102. A Shiver (2005)
103. The Riverbank Field (2007)
104. Articulations (2008)
105. One on a Side (2008)
106. Spelling It Out (2009)
107. Writer & Righter (2010)
108. Stone From Delphi (2012)
109. The Last Walk (2013)
110. My Yeats (2019)

Edited:


111. [with Ted Hughes] The Rattle Bag (1982)
     • [with Ted Hughes] The Rattle Bag: An Anthology of Poetry. 1982. London: Faber, 1985.
112. [with Ted Hughes] The School Bag (1997)
     • [with Ted Hughes] The School Bag. London: Faber, 1997.

Recordings:


113. Collected Poems (2009)
     • Collected Poems: Death of a Naturalist (1966); Door into the Dark (1969); Wintering Out (1972); North (1975); Field Work (1979); Station Island (1984); The Haw Lantern (1987); Seeing Things (1991); The Spirit Level (1998); Electric Light (2001); District and Circle (2006). Read by the Author. Set of 15 CDs. Dublin: RTE / Lannan, 2009.

Secondary:


114. O'Driscoll, Dennis. Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney. London: Faber, 2008.

Seamus Heaney (2010)

•

The True Story of the Novel (1): The Eastern Frame-Story

Chez Chiara: The 1001 Nights

I suspect that one reason why Ian Watt's Rise of the Novel scenario looks so out-of-date is because the novel itself is a very different beast now than in 1957. That was the heyday of the Movement in Britain, with novels by Kingsley Amis, John Wain and Iris Murdoch on the bestseller lists. It was before the "boom" in Latin American writing, before Magic Realism, before the Empire had even really started to write back ...

What I'd like to do in this series of posts, then, is to present a fairly uncontroversial account of the evolution of prose fiction as it seems to have taken place in a number of parallel traditions all over the world.

There's no particular reason to keep you in suspense over what I think I've detected in my desultory reading of Eastern and Western fiction over the past twenty-five years or so (the period I've been interested in the subject). So, here are my findings in a nutshell:

1. Folktales can be patterned into larger fictional entities through more or less complex Frame-story structures:
   • The 1001 Nights / Apuleius' Golden Ass / Boccaccio's Decameron


2. Auto/biographical Writing (both in the form of Confessions and Exemplary Lives) inspires similar tropes in fiction:
   • St. Augustine's Confessions / Xenophon's Cyropaedia / Plutarch's Parallel Lives


3. Anthologies of Poems, with commentary on the events which inspired them, can provide a model for individual Chapter structures:
   • The Tales of Ise / Egil's Saga / Dante's Vita Nuova


4. Epic Narratives in verse set an example for Prose Romances on a smaller or larger scale
   • Aucassin et Nicolette / The French Prose Vulgate of the Arthurian Legends / Malory's Morte d'Arthur


5. Historiography (both Chronicles and more Analytical Accounts) inspires historical sagas and other fictions:
   • Ari Þorgilsson's Íslendingabók & Landnámabók / Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian / Nihongi: The Chronicles of Japan


6. Religious Texts combine history, prophecy and philosophy in complex prose structures which can be adapted for the purposes of Secular Storytelling:
   • Confucius' Analects / Kojiki: Record of Ancient Matters / The Bible


7. Satire and Parody of any and all previous genres encourages ever bolder experimentation in the emerging Modern Novel:
   • Cervantes' Don Quixote / Fielding's Shamela / Sterne's Tristram Shandy

I'd like to look at each of these processes in turn, in terms of one of the seven traditions I outlined in my first post on the subject, concentrating each time on one key text.

So the pattern should look something like this:

•


1001 Nights Manuscript



1. The Eastern Frame-story [c.1st millennium BCE to 18th century CE]:
   • Alf Layla wa Layla [1001 Nights] (c.8th-14th century)

   There's a certain limit on the size a folktale can attain. Given it's an essentially oral medium, it tends to lose coherence and interest if carried on for too long. The idea of the frame-story (no. 1 above), allows authors and storytellers (if that distinction can really be made in this context) to carry their stories further. This allows the possibility of ironic reference between different levels of the frame: Scheherazade telling stories about adulterous and destructive women, for instance. It also tends to carry with it, as a corollary, an almost excessive layer of repetitive patterning (repeated threes, sevens, and nines: colour motifs such as the black knight, the red knight, etc.) If it weren't for the revival of many of these techniques in the postcolonial and postmodern novel, one might have seen these as characteristics of an embryonic stage of the novel's development. That did, in fact, use to be the critical orthodoxy on the subject. I don't think that view is tenable any longer, though.




•


Apuleius: The Golden Ass



2. The Greek and Roman Novel [c.1st century BCE to 4th century CE]:
   • Apuleius: The Golden Ass (c.125–c.180)

   Who is the narrator of the Asinus Aureus [Golden Ass]? Given the hero is called Lucius, and its author was called Lucius Apuleius (the two also share a hometown: Madaurus in Algeria), it's not surprising that many of its early readers saw it as essentially autobiographical (no.2 above) - St. Augustine among them. In fact, it's said to have been one of the major stylistic influences on his Confessions, composed in the late 4th century. More modern readings have pointed out the immense complexity and sophistication of Apuleius' narrative techniques. Far from a piece of naive picaresque, the novel can be read as satire, religious allegory, postmodern game-playing, or - yes - an apology for the life of one who was himself accused of black magic during his lifetime. Apuleius himself seems to have more in common with Borges and Nabokov than most of the prose writers in the intervening two millennia, in fact.


•


Murasaki Shikibu: Genji Monogatari (1987)



3. The Japanese Monogatari [c.9th-18th century CE]:
   • Murasaki Shikibu: Genji Monogatari [The Tale of Genji] (c.1000)

   Like all of the world's great masterpieces, Lady Murasaki's Tale of Genji can be approached from a lot of different directions, and read in a lot of different ways. She herself admits (in her diary) the influence of earlier historical writing on hers (or, rather, quotes a remark by the Emperor to that effect). The fact that each individual chapter - especially initially - is such an exercise in mood and atmosphere, encourages one to see the influence of poetry anthologies (no. 3 above) such as the earlier Tales of Ise on her conception of narrative. Interestingly, this same method resulted in Melville's last extended prose work, Billy Budd. It began as the headnote to a poem, and grew from there.


•


Malory: Morte D'Arthur (1485)



4. The Medieval and Renaissance Romance [c.12th-16th century CE]:
   • Sir Thomas Malory: Le Morte d'Arthur (1485)

   The discovery of the Winchester Ms. of Malory in the 1930s has enabled us to understand a lot more about his methods of composition. Essentially he drew from a pre-existing body of romance-writing (no. 4 above) in French - composed initially in verse (by the likes of Chrétien de Troyes), but subsequently in prose (by among others, the anonymous compilers of the prose Lancelot and its various successors). The pruning and condensation he used to simplify his originals transcended mere translation, however. Whle his editor, Caxton, had a good deal to do with our idea of him as the author of a single book in many parts, rather than a series of inter-related prose romances, the result is one of the most influential pieces of fiction ever composed.


•


Njals saga (c.1300)



5. The Sagas of Icelanders [c.13th-14th century CE]:
   • Brennu-Njáls saga [Njal's Saga] (late 13th century)

   Just how historical the Icelandic family sagas, or sagas of Icelanders, really are, was a subject of controversy for a long time. The initial assumption, by their first readers in Europe, was that they were fairly straight records of particular crimes and feuds in the era of the first settlement of the island. Subsequent research, though (notably in Sigurður Nordal's 1940 book on Hrafnkel's Saga) has pointed out a considerable number of historical inaccuracies in their narratives. They should, it is now argued by the likes of Hermann Pálsson (1988), be seen as sophisticated works of creative fiction based on regional history (no. 5 above), rather than being dismissed as mere transcripts of oral tradition. The more closely they are studied, in fact, the more complex and artful their narrative techniques turn out to be.


•


Cao Xue Qin: The Red Chamber Dream (c.1780)



6. The Chinese Novel [c.14th-18th century CE]:
   • Cao Xueqin: Hóng Lóu Mèng [The Red Chamber Dream] (late 18th century)

   The peculiarities of the classic Chinese novel - the immense length of most of them; the intense care with which each, essentially stand-alone, chapter is constructed - are familiar to most readers who've adventured into even one of them. The transition from historiography to fiction in China (as in Iceland) is an obvious one, hence one which has often been pointed out. A composition as intricate and self-conscious as the Hung Lou Meng [Red Chamber Dream - also knows as "The Story of the Stone"] draws its inspiration from many sources, however. On the one hand, the author of the preface sees it as largely autobiographical. Its weird mixture of supernatural and realist writing, though, tends to align it with earlier fictions such as the Journey to the West or the Ch'in P'ing Mei. I've argued above (no. 6) that one might see analogies with this genre-bending in certain religious narratives, both Eastern and Western. Whether the pious allegories at the end of this huge book are really meant to be taken straight, or were even composed by the original author, remain matters of controversy, however.


•


Gustave Doré: Don Quixote (1863)



7. The Modern Novel [c.17th century CE to the present]:
   • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra: El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha (1605 & 1615)

   What can one say about Don Quixote that hasn't already been said a thousand times? Well, quite a lot, as it turns out. Given that most readers don't persevere past the first few chapters, and very few make it even as far as the end of part one, let alone into the intricacies of part two, I think it's fair to say that the reason why it's been quite so influential on the evolution of the European novel is not really so obvious as it might be. A satire, yes (no. 7 above), but a satire of a genre that Cervantes actually returned to after finishing his novel (his last work, Persiles y Sigismunda (1617) is as romantic and absurd as any of the chivalric romances he abuses in the Quixote). Establishing the contention that Cervantes, rather than Richardson (or even Defoe) is the best point of departure for a fuller comprehension the modern novel is clearly an area where a great deal of work remains to be done.

•

So there you have it: that's the plan. Given this blog is mostly dedicated to recording my own adventures among books (and particularly the ins and outs of my own library), I'll try to illustrate each of these points with the readings that have inspired it as I go along:

Let's start, then, In India. Whether or not nineteenth-century scholars were correct in attributing the invention of virtually everything to the ancient Sanskrit-speaking Aryan cultures of Central Asia and (later) India is hard to say at this date. What is certain is that these are among the oldest works of creative prose fiction in existence:

Panchatantra Relief (Java)

India:

Authors & Works: (chronological)

1. The Jātaka Tales (c.4th century BCE)
2. The Pañcatantra (c.3rd century BCE)
3. Somadeva (c.11th century)
4. Narayana (c.12th century)
5. The Simhāsana Dvātrimśikā (c.12th century)
6. Śivadāsa (c.12th-14th century)

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The Jātaka Tales (c.4th century BCE)


1. Rhys Davids, T. W. trans. Buddhist Birth-Stories (Jātaka Tales): The Commentarial Introduction Entitled Nidāna-Kathā, The Story of the Lineage. 1880. Broadway Translations. London & New York: Routledge & Dutton, 1925.


2. Cowell, E. B., ed. The Jātaka, or Stories of the Buddha’s Former Births. Trans. R. Chambers, W. H. D. Rouse, H. T. Francis & R. A. Neil, W. H. D. Rouse, H. T. Francis, E. B. Cowell & W. H. D. Rouse. 6 vols in 3. 1895-1907. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1990.

The Panchatantra [Pañcatantra] (c.3rd century BCE)


3. Ryder, Arthur W., trans. The Panchatantra. 1925. Chicago: Phoenix Books, 1964.


4. Edgerton, Franklin, trans. The Panchatantra. London: Allen & Unwin, 1965.


5. Olivelle, Patrick, trans. The Pañcatantra: The Book of India’s Folk Wisdom. The World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Somadeva (c.11th century)


6. Penzer, N. M., ed. The Ocean of Story: Being C. H. Tawney’s Translation of Somadeva’s Kathā Sarit Sāgara (or Ocean of Streams of Story). 1880-84. 10 vols. 1924. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1968.


7. Somadeva. Tales from the Kathāsaritsāgara. Trans. Arshia Sattar. Foreword by Wendy Doniger. 1994. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996.


8. Somadeva. Océan des rivières de contes. Ed. Nalini Balbir, with Mildrède Besnard, Lucien Billoux, Sylvain Brocquet, Colette Caillat, Christine Chojnacki, Jean Fezas & Jean-Pierre Osier. Traduction des ‘Contes du Vampire’ par Louis & Marie-Simone Renou, 1963. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 438. Paris: Gallimard, 1997.

Narayana (c.12th century)


9. Chandiramani, G. L., trans. The Hitopadesha: An Ancient Fabled Classic. 1995. Mumbai: Jaico Publishing House, 1999.

The Simhāsana Dvātrimśikā [Thirty-two Tales of the Throne] (c.12th century)


10. Edgerton, Franklin, ed. & trans. Vikrama’s Adventures, or the Thirty-two Tales of the Throne. Harvard Oriental Series, ed. Charles Rockwell Lanman, 26 & 27. 1926. 2 vols. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1993.


11. Haksar, A. N. D., trans. Simhāsana Dvātrimśikā: Thirty-two Tales of the Throne of Vikramaditya. New Delhi: Penguin, 1998.


12. Bhoothalingam, Mathuram. Stories of Vikramaditya. Illustrated by Jomraj. New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1982.

Śivadāsa (c.12th-14th century)


13. [Burton, Richard F. Vikram and the Vampire, or Tales of Hindu Devilry. 1870. Memorial Edition. Ed. Isabel Burton. London: Thylston & Edwards, 1893.]


14. Śivadāsa. The Five-and-Twenty Tales of the Genie: Vetālapañćavinśati. Trans. Chandra Rajan. 1995. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2006.



Anthologies & Secondary Literature:


15. Alphonso-Karkala, John B., trans. An Anthology of Indian Literature. A Pelican Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971.


16. Beck, Brenda E. F., Peter J. Claus, Praphulladata Goswami, & Jawaharlal Handoo, ed. Folktales of India. Foreword by A. K. Ramanujan. Folktales of the World, ed. Richard M. Dorson. 1987. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989.


17. Keith, A. Berriedale. A History of Sanskrit Literature. 1920. London: Oxford University Press, 1966.


18. Ramanujan, A. K. ed. Folktales from India: A Selection of Oral Tales from Twenty-two Languages. 1991. The Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library. Pantheon Books. New York: Random House, Inc., 1993.


19. Souza, Eunice de. 101 Folktales from India. Illustrated by Sujata Singh. A Puffin Book. New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2004.

Most of these works are very hard to date. Somadeva, author of the Ocean of the Streams of Story (which I've written about here), describes a most complicated, semi-mythical genesis for his work. It's certainly based on a much older version, but just how old it is, is almost impossible to establish.

The beast-fables of the Panchatantra have travelled across the world, but disentangling every stage of their journey at this late date is, once again, an almost unimaginably complex task.

The fact that the Jātaka tales of Buddha's early incarnations may predate even these early collections of folktales reminds me to acknowledge that all seven of the lines of transmission from other genres to extended prose fiction (what we might plausibly refer to as roads towards the Novel) can exist in any one of the traditions under examination here. It's only for convenience's sake that I've chosen to isolate one technique per tradition, in fact. The influence of religious texts on Sanskrit fiction is clearly omnipresence, however "secular" the motivations (sex, money, prestige) of most of the actual protagonists of the tales may be.

•

From India we move to Persia (or Iran, if you prefer). The main reason for this is because this is supposed to have been the route of transmission for the frame-tale tradition: from India to Persia and thence into the Arabian Middle East.

Certainly the original version of the Thousand and One Nights is said to have been written in Persian. Unfortunately this Hazār Afsān [Thousand Stories] is no longer extant, but the fact that all the major characters in the frame story (Shahryār, Shahrazad and Dunyazad) have Persian names, and are located historically in Pre-Islamic Persia, during the era of the Sassanids (224 to 651 AD), makes this genealogy fruitless to question:

Baysunghur: Shahnameh (1430)

Persia:

Authors & Works: (chronological)

1. Ferdowsi (940-1020)
2. Omar Khayyám (1048-1131)
3. Nizami Ganjavi (1141-1209)
4. Farīd ud-Dīn ʿAṭṭār (1145-1221)
5. Rumi (1207-1273)
6. Saʿdī (1210-1291)
7. Sa'ad ad-Din Varavini (c. 13th century

---

Hakīm Abul-Qāsim Ferdowsī Tūsī (940-1021)


1. Ferdowsi. The Epic of the Kings: Shah-Nama, the National Epic of Persia. Trans. Reuben Levy. 1967. Rev. Amin Banani. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985.

Omar Khayyám (1048-1131)


2. Avery, Peter, & John Heath-Stubbs, trans. The Ruba’iyat of Omar Khayyam. 1979. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981.


3. Fitzgerald, Edward, trans. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Ed. Reynold Alleyne Nicholson. 1909. London: A. & C. Black., 1973.


4. Fitzgerald, Edward, trans. The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám and Six Plays of Calderon. Everyman’s Library 819. 1928. London & New York: J. M. Dent & E. P. Dutton, 1948.


5. Fitzgerald, Edward. Selected Works. Ed. Joanna Richardson. The Reynard Library. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1962.


6. Graves, Robert, & Omar Ali-Shah, trans. The Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayaam: A New Translation with Critical Commentaries. 1967. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972.

Nizami Ganjavi (1141-1209)


7. Ganjavi, Nizami. Haft Paykar: A Medieval Persian Romance. 1197. Trans. Julie Scott Meisami. World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Farīd ud-Dīn ʿAṭṭār (1145-1221)


8. Attar, Farid ud-Din. The Conference of the Birds. Trans. Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.


9. Attar, Farid ud-Din. The Conference of the Birds, Mantiq ut-Tair: A Philosophical Religious Poem in Prose - Rendered into English from the Literal and Complete French Translation of Garcin de Tassy. Trans. C. S. Nott. 1954. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967.

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (1207–1273)


10. Rumi, Jalal al-Din. Tales from the Masnavi. Trans. A. J. Arberry. 1961. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1968.


11. Rumi, Jalal al-Din. Selected Poems. Trans. Coleman Banks, with John Moyne, A. J. Arberry & Reynold Nicholson. As 'The Essential Rumi', 1995. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2004.

Abū-Muhammad Muslih al-Dīn bin Abdallāh Shīrāzī, Saadi Shirazi [(1210-1291)


12. Burton, R. F., trans [Edward Retnisak]. Tales from the Gulistân, or Rose-Garden of the Sheikh Sa’di of Shirâz. 1888. London: Philip Allen, 1928.


13. Sadi. Gulistan or Flower-Garden. Trans. James Ross. Ed. Charles Sayle. London: Walter Scott, n.d. [c.1890].

Sa'ad ad-Din Varavini (c. 13th century)


14. Varâvini, Sa’d al-Dîn. Contes du Prince Marzbân. 1220. Trans. Marie-Hélène Ponroy. Connaissance de l’Orient. Paris: Gallimard, 1992.



Anthologies & Secondary Literature:


15. Arberry, A. J., ed. The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám and Other Persian Poems: An Anthology of Verse Translations. Everyman’s Library 1996. London & New York: Dent & Dutton, 1954.


16. Dole, Nathan Haskell, & Belle M. Walker, eds. The Persian Poets. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1901.


17. Ernst, Paul, ed. Erzählungen aus tausendundein Tag; Vermehrt um andere Morgenländische Geschichten. Trans. Felix Paul Greve and Paul Hansmann. 2 vols. Frankfurt: Insel Verlag, 1987.


18. Fehse, Willi, ed. The Thousand and One Days. Trans. Anthea Bell. London: Abelard-Schumann, 1971.


19. Levy, Reuben, trans. The Three Dervishes and other Persian Tales and Legends. Oxford: Humphrey Milford, 1923.


20. McCarthy, J., trans. The Thousand and One Days: Persian Tales. 2 vols. London: Chatto, 1892.


21. Olcott, Frances Jenkins. Tales of the Persian Genii. Illustrated by Willy Pogany. London: George G. Harrap & Company Limited, 1919.


22. Pétis de la Croix, ed. The Persian and Turkish Tales, compleat. Trans. Dr. King. 2 vols. London: Richard Ware, 1714.


23. Safâ, Z., ed. Anthologie de la poésie persane: XIe-XXe siècle. Trans. G. Lazard, R. Lescot & H. Massé. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1964.

I've included poets as well as prose-writers here, as some of the crucial works in the frame-story tradition are in verse rather than prose (like Chaucer's Canterbury Tales). You'll observe that they all postdate the era of the original transmission of the 1001 Nights by quite some considerable margin. There are some fascinating and influential works of fiction here, though: Rumi's Gulistan (1259), for instance, or Varavini's Marzubannama (1220).

•

Which brings us, at long last, to the Nights themselves. I've had a great deal to say about them on this blog already (at various times). And for basic information about them I can't do better than refer you to my blog on the subject: Scheherazade's Web

Philip Cole: 1001 Nights (1952)

The 1001 Nights:

Categories: (chronological)

1. Texts
2. Major Translations:
   1. Antoine Galland [1704-1717] (French)
   2. Dom Dennis Chavis & M. Cazotte [1788-89] (French)
   3. Max. Habicht, Fr. H. von der Hagen, and Carl Schall [1824-25] (German)
   4. Gustav Weil [4 vols: 1837-41] (German)
   5. Edward William Lane [1839-40] (English)
   6. John Payne [1882-89] (English)
   7. Richard F. Burton [1885-88] (English)
   8. Max Henning [24 vols: 1895-97] (German)
   9. Andrew Lang [1898] (English)
   10. Dr. J. C. Mardrus [1899-1904] (French)
   11. Cary von Karwath [1906-14] (German)
   12. Laurence Housman [1907-14] (English)
   13. Enno Littmann [1921-28] (German)
   14. M. A. Salier [1929-36] (Russian)
   15. Francesco Gabrieli [1948] (Italian)
   16. A. J. Arberry [1953] (English)
   17. N. J. Dawood [1954-57] (English)
   18. René R. Khawam [1965-67 & 1985-88] (French)
   19. Felix Tauer [1928-34] (Czech & German)
   20. Husain Haddawy [1990-95] (English)
   21. Jamel Eddine Bencheikh & André Miquel [1991-2001 & 2005-7] (French)
   22. Malcolm & Ursula Lyons [2008] (English)
3. Analogous Collections
4. Imitations & Tributes
5. Anthologies & Secondary Literature

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Texts:


1. Habicht, Maximilian, & M. H. L. Fleischer, ed. Tausend und Eine Nacht Arabisch. Nach einer Handschrift aus Tunis. 12 vols. Breslau, 1825-43.


2. Alf Laylah wa Laylah. 2 vols. Bulaq, A.H. 1251 [= 1835].


3. Macnaghten, W. H., ed. The Alif Laila, or Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Commonly Known as ‘The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments;’ Now, for the First Time, Published Complete in the Original Arabic, from an Egyptian Manuscript Brought to India by the Late Major Turner Macan, Editor of the Shah-Nameh. 4 vols. Calcutta: W. Thacker, 1839-42.


4. Zotenberg, Hermann. Histoire d’Alâ al-Din ou La Lampe Merveilleuse: Texte Arabe publié avec une notice sur quelques manuscrits des Mille et une nuits. Paris; Imprimerie Nationale, 1888.


5. Alph Laylé Wa Laylé. 4 vols. Beirut: Al-Maktaba Al-Thakafiyat, A.H. 1401 [= 1981].



Major Translations:


Antoine Galland [12 vols: 1704-1717] (French)


6. Galland, Antoine, trans. Les Mille et Une Nuits: Contes arabes traduits par Galland. 12 vols. 1704-17. Ed. Gaston Picard. 2 vols. 1960. Paris: Garnier, 1975.


7. Galland, Antoine, trans. Les Mille et Une Nuits: Contes arabes. 12 vols. 1704-17. Ed. Jean Gaulmier. 3 vols. 1965. Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1990, 1985, 1991.


8. Arabian Nights Entertainments: Consisting of One Thousand and One Stories, Told by the Sultaness of the Indies, to divert the Sultan from the Execution of a bloody Vow he had made to marry a Lady every day, and have her cut off next Morning, to avenge himself for the Disloyalty of his first Sultaness, &c. Containing a better Account of the Customs, Manners, and Religion of the Eastern Nations, viz. Tartars, Persians, and Indians, than is to be met with in any Author hitherto published. Translated into French from the Arabian Mss. by M. Galland of the Royal Academy, and now done into English from the last Paris Edition. London: Andrew Bell, 1706-17. 16th ed. 4 vols. London & Edinburgh: C. Elliot, 1781.


9. Forster, Edward, trans. The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. 1812. Rev. G. Moir Bussey. London: J. J. Chidley, 1846.


10. The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. [Trans. Antoine Galland]. Sir John Lubbock’s Hundred Books 67. London: Routledge, 1893.


11. Mack, Robert L., ed. Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. The World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.


Dom Dennis Chavis & M. Cazotte [4 vols: 1788-89] (French)


12. Chavis, Dom, and M. Cazotte, trans. La Suite des Mille et une Nuits, Contes Arabes. Cabinet des Fées 38-41. 4 vols. Geneva: Barde & Manget, 1788-89.


Max. Habicht, Fr. H. von der Hagen, and Carl Schall [15 vols: 1824-25] (German)


13. Habicht, Max., Fr. H. von der Hagen, and Carl Schall, trans. Tausend und Eine Nacht, Arabische Erzählungen. 1824-25. Ed. Karl Martin Schiller. 12 vols. Leipzig: F. W. Hendel, 1926.


Gustav Weil [4 vols: 1837-41] (German)


14. Weil, Gustav, trans. Tausendundeine Nacht. 1837-41. Ed. Inge Dreecken. 3 vols. Wiesbaden: R. Löwit, n.d. [c. 1960s]


15. Weil, Gustav, trans. Liebesgeschichten aus Tausendundeiner Nacht, übertragen aus dem arabischen Urtext von Gustav Weil: Mit Holzstichen der Ausgabe von 1865. 1837-41. München: Delphin Verlag, 1987.


Edward William Lane [3 vols: 1839-40] (English)


16. Lane, Edward William, trans. The Thousand and One Nights, Commonly Called, in England, The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. A New Translation from the Arabic, with Copious Notes. 3 vols. London: Charles Knight, 1839-41.


17. Lane, Edward William, trans. The Thousand and One Nights; Commonly Called The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. Ed. Edward Stanley Poole. 3 vols. 1859. London: Chatto, 1912.


18. Lane, Edward William, trans. The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. Ed. Stanley Lane-Poole. 4 vols. 1906. Bohn’s Popular Library. London: G. Bell, 1925.


19. Lane, Edward William, trans. The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments or The Thousand and One Nights: The Complete, Original Translation of Edward William Lane, with the Translator’s Complete, Original Notes and Commentaries on the Text. New York: Tudor Publishing Co., 1927.


20. Lane, Edward William, trans. The Thousand and One Nights, or Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. Wood Engravings from Original Designs by William Harvey. London: Chatto and Windus, 1930.


John Payne [13 vols: 1882-89] (English)


21. Payne, John, trans. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night; Now First Completely Done into English Prose and Verse, from the Original Arabic. 9 vols. London: Villon Society, 1882-84.


22. Payne, John, trans. 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; Now First Done into English. 3 vols. London: Villon Society, 1884.


23. John Payne, Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp; Zein ul Asnam and the King of the Jinn; two stories done into English from the recently discovered Arabic text. London: Villon Society, 1889.


24. Payne, John, trans. The Portable Arabian Nights. 1882-1884. Ed. Joseph Campbell. 1952. New York: The Viking Press, 1963.


25. Payne, John, trans. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night. 1882-1884. Publisher's Note by Steven Moore. 3 vols. Ann Arbor, MI: Borders Classics, 2007.


Richard F. Burton [16 vols: 1885-88] (English)


26. Burton, Richard F, trans. A Plain and Literal Translation of The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, Now Entituled The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: With Introduction, Explanatory Notes on the Manners and Customs of Moslem Men and a Terminal Essay upon the History of the Nights. 10 vols. Benares [= Stoke-Newington]: Kamashastra Society, 1885. N.p. [= Boston]: The Burton Club, n.d.


27. Burton, Richard F., trans. Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night with Notes Anthropological and Explanatory. 6 vols. Benares [= Stoke-Newington]: Kamashastra Society, 1886-88. 7 vols. N.p. [= Boston]: The Burton Club, n.d.


28. Burton, Richard F., trans. The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments. 1885. 3 vols. New York: The Heritage Press, 1934.


29. Burton, Richard F., trans. The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments. 1885. 10 vols. U.S.A.: The Burton Club, n.d. [c.1940s].


30. Burton, Richard F., trans. Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights with Notes Anthropological and Explanatory. 1886-88. 6 vols. U.S.A..: The Burton Club, n.d. [c. 1940s].


31. Zipes, Jack, ed. Arabian Nights: The Marvels and Wonders of the Thousand and One Nights, Adapted from Richard F. Burton’s Unexpurgated Translation. Signet Classic. New York: Penguin, 1991.


32. Zipes, Jack, ed. Arabian Nights, Volume II: More Marvels and Wonders of the Thousand and One Nights, Adapted from Sir Richard F. Burton’s Unexpurgated Translation. Signet Classic. New York: New American Library, 1999.


Max Henning [24 vols: 1895-97] (German)


33. Henning, Max, trans. Tausend und eine Nacht. 1895-97. Ed. Hans W. Fischer. Berlin & Darmstadt: Deutsche Buch-Gemeinschaft, 1957.


Andrew Lang [1 vol: 1898] (English)


34. Lang, Andrew, ed. Tales from the Arabian Nights. Illustrated by H. J. Ford. 1898. London: Wordsworth Classics, 1993.


Dr. J. C. Mardrus [16 vols: 1899-1904] (French)


35. Mardrus, Dr. J. C., trans. Le Livre des Mille et une Nuits. 16 vols. Paris: Édition de la Revue blanche, 1899-1904. Ed. Marc Fumaroli. 2 vols. Paris: Laffont, 1989.


36. Mathers, Edward Powys, trans. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night: Rendered from the Literal and Complete Version of Dr. J. C. Mardrus; and Collated with Other Sources. 1923. 8 vols. London: The Casanova Society, 1929.


37. Mathers, E. Powys. Sung to Shahryar: Poems from the Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night. London: The Casanova Society, 1925.


38. Mathers, E. Powys, trans. Arabian Love Tales: Being Romances Drawn from the Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Rendered into English from the Literal French Translation of Dr. J. C. Mardrus. Illustrated by Lettice Sandford. London: The Folio Society, 1949.


39. Mathers, E. Powys, trans. The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night: Rendered into English from the Literal and Complete French Translation of Dr. J. C. Mardrus. 4 vols. 1949. 2nd ed. 1964. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972.


Cary von Karwath [19 vols: 1906-14] (German)


40. Karwath, Cary Von, trans. 1001 Nacht: Vollständige Ausgabe in 18 Taschenbüchern mit einem Zusatzband: Nach dem arabischen Urtext angeordnet und übertragen von Cary von Karwath. 1906-14. 19 vols. München: Goldmann Verlag, 1987.


Laurence Housman [4 vols: 1907-14] (English)


41. Housman, Laurence. Stories from the Arabian Nights. Illustrated by Edmund Dulac. 1907. New York: Doran, n.d.


42. Housman, Laurence. Sindbad the Sailor and Other Stories from the Arabian Nights. Illustrated by Edmund Dulac. 1907. Weathervane Books. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1978.


Enno Littmann [6 vols: 1921-28] (German)


43. Littmann, Enno, trans. Die Erzählungen aus den Tausendundein Nächten: Vollständige deutsche Ausgabe in zwölf Teilbänden zum ersten mal nach dem arabischen Urtext der Calcuttaer Ausgabe aus dem Jahre 1839 übertragen von Enno Littmann. 1921-28. 2nd ed. 1953. 6 vols in 12. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1976.


44. Littmann, Enno, trans. Geschichten der Liebe aus den 1001 Nächten: Aus dem arabischen Urtext übertragen von Enno Littmann. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1973.


M. A. Salier [8 vols: 1929-36] (Russian)


45. Salier, M. A., trans. Тысяча и Одна Ночь. 1929-36. 6 vols. Санкт-Петербург: «Кристалл», 2000.


Francesco Gabrieli [4 vols: 1948] (Italian)


46. Gabrieli, Francesco, ed. Le mille e una notte: Prima versione integrale dall’arabo. Trans. Francesco Gabrieli, Antonio Cesaro, Constantino Pansera, Umberto Rizzitano and Virginia Vacca. 1948. Gli struzzi 35. 4 vols. Torino: Einaudi, 1972.


47. Faccioli, Emilio, ed. Le mille e una notte: Scelta di racconti. Dall’edizione integrale diretta da Francesco Gabrieli. Letture per la Scuola Media 56. Torino: Einaudi, 1980.


A. J. Arberry [1 vol: 1953] (English)


48. Arberry, A. J., trans. Scheherazade: Tales from the Thousand and One Nights. London: Allen and Unwin, 1953.


N. J. Dawood [2 vols: 1954-57] (English)


49. Dawood, N. J., trans. The Thousand and One Nights: The Hunchback, Sindbad, and Other Tales. Penguin 1001. 1954. Penguin Classics L64. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955.


50. Dawood, N. J., trans. Aladdin and Other Tales from The Thousand and One Nights. Penguin Classics L71. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957.


51. Dawood, N. J., trans. Tales from the Thousand and One Nights. 1954-57. 2nd ed. 1973. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982.


René R. Khawam [7 vols: 1965-67 & 1985-88] (French)


52. Khawam, René R., trans. Les Mille et une nuits. Traduction Nouvelle et Complète faite sur les Manuscrits par René R. Khawam. 4 Vols. Paris: Editions Albin Michel, 1965-67.


53. Khawam, René R., trans. Les Mille et une nuits. 4 vols. 1965-67. 2nd ed. 1986. Paris: Presses Pocket, 1989.


54. Khawam, René R., trans. Les Aventures de Sindbad le Marin. Paris: Phébus, 1985.


55. Khawam, René R., trans. Les Aventures de Sindbad le Terrien. Paris: Phébus, 1986.


56. Khawam, René R., trans. Le Roman d’Aladin. Paris: Phébus, 1988.


Felix Tauer [8 vols: 1928-34] (Czech & German)


57. Tauer, Felix, trans. Tisíc a Jedna Noc. 1928-34. 5 vols. 1973. Praha: Ikar, 2001.


58. Tauer, Felix, trans. Erotische Geschichten aus den tausendundein Nächten: Aus dem arabischen Urtext der Wortley Montague-Handschrift übertragen und herausgegeben von Felix Tauer. 1966. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1983.


59. Tauer, Felix, trans. Neue Erzählungen aus den Tausendundein Nächten: Die in anderen Versionen von »1001 Nacht« nicht enthaltenen Geschichten der Wortley-Montague-Handschrift der Oxforder Bodleian Library; Aus dem arabischen Urtext vollständig übertragen und erläutert von Felix Tauer. 2 vols. 1982. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1989.


Husain Haddawy [2 vols: 1990-95] (English)


60. Haddawy, Husain, trans. The Arabian Nights: Based on the Text of the Fourteenth-Century Syrian Manuscript edited by Muhsin Mahdi. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1990.


61. Haddawy, Husain, trans. The Arabian Nights II: Sindbad and Other Popular Stories. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995.


62. Heller-Roazen, Daniel, ed. The Arabian Nights. The Husain Haddaway Translation Based on the Text Edited by Muhsin Mahdi: Contexts, Criticism. 1990 & 1995. A Norton Critical Edition. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010.


Jamel Eddine Bencheikh & André Miquel [7 vols: 1991-2001 & 2005-7] (French)


63. Bencheikh, Jamel Eddine, and André Miquel, ed. Les Mille et Une Nuits: Contes choisis. Trans. Jamel Eddine Bencheikh, André Miquel & Touhami Bencheikh. 2 vols. Folio 2256-57. Paris: Gallimard, 1991.


64. Bencheikh, Jamel Eddine, and André Miquel, ed & trans. Les Mille et Une Nuits: Contes choisis III. Folio 2775. Paris: Gallimard, 1996.


65. Bencheikh, Jamel Eddine, and André Miquel, ed & trans. Sindbâd de la mer et autres contes des Mille et Une Nuits: Contes choisis IV. Folio 3581. Paris: Gallimard, 2001.


66. Bencheikh, Jamel Eddine, and André Miquel, trans. Les Mille et Une Nuits. 3 vols. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Paris: Gallimard, 2005-7.


Malcolm & Ursula Lyons [3 vols: 2008] (English)


67. Lyons, Malcolm & Ursula, trans. The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights. Introduction by Robert Irwin. 3 vols. Penguin Classics Hardback. London: Penguin, 2008.


68. Lyons, Malcolm & Ursula, trans. Three Tales from The Arabian Nights. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 2008.


69. Lyons, Malcolm & Ursula, trans. The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights. Volume 1: Nights 1 to 294. Introduction by Robert Irwin. 3 vols. 2008. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2010.


70. Lyons, Malcolm & Ursula, trans. The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights. Volume 2: Nights 295 to 719. Introduced & Annotated by Robert Irwin. 3 vols. 2008. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2010.


71. Lyons, Malcolm & Ursula, trans. The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights. Volume 3: Nights 719 to 1001. Introduction by Robert Irwin. 3 vols. 2008. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2010.



Analogous Collections:


72. Benalmocaffa, Abdalá. Calila y Dimna. Introducción, traducción y notas de Marcelino Villegas. Libro de Bolsillo: Clásicos 1512. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1991.


73. Clerk, Mrs. Godfrey, trans. Ilâm-en-Nâs. Historical Tales and Anecdotes of the Time of the Early Kalîfahs. London: Henry S. King, 1873.


74. Gaudefroy-Demombynes, M., trans. Les Cent et une Nuits. 1911. Bibliothèque Arabe. Paris: Sinbad, 1982.


75. Kalila and Dimna: Selected Fables of Bidpai. Retold by Ramsay Wood. Introduction by Doris Lessing. 1980. London: Granada, 1982.


76. Lewis, Geoffrey, trans. The Book of Dede Korkut. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1974.


77. Mas'ūdī. From The Meadows of Gold. Trans. Paul Lunde & Caroline Stone. Penguin Great Journeys, 2. London: Penguin, 2007.


78. Richmond, Diana. ’Antar and ’Abla, A Bedouin Romance: Rewritten and Arranged by Diana Richmond. London: Quartet Books, 1978.


79. Rosen, Georg, trans. Tutti-Nameh: Das Papageienbuch. Aus der türkischen Fassung übertragen von Georg Rosen. Stuttgart: Europäischer Buchklub, 1957.


80. Shah, Amina, trans. The Assemblies of Al-Hariri: Fifty Encounters with the Shaykh Abu Zayd of Seruj. London: The Octagon Press, 1980.



Imitations & Tributes:


81. Gueullette, Thomas. Les Mille et Un Quarts d’heure. 1785. Cabinet des Fées 4. 2 vols. Arles: Éditions Philippe Picquier, 1994.


82. Lemirre, Elisabeth, ed. La Bibliothèque des Génies et des Fées. 1785. Cabinet des Fées 3. 1988. Arles: Éditions Philippe Picquier, 1994.


83. Manuel, Don Juan. Count Lucanor, or The Fifty Pleasant Tales of Patronio. 1335. Trans James York. Broadway translations. London & New York: George Routledge & E. P. Dutton, n.d.



Anthologies & Secondary Literature:


84. Abou-Hussein, Hiam & Charles Pellat. Cheherazade: Personage Littéraire. Algiers: Société Nationale d’Édition et de Diffusion, 1976.


85. Ali, Muhsin Jassim. Scheherazade in England: A Study of Nineteenth-Century English Criticism of the Arabian Nights. Washington: Three Continents Press, 1981.


86. Bencheikh, Jamel Eddine. Les Mille et une Nuits ou la parole prisonnière. Bibliothèque des Idées. Paris: Gallimard, 1988.


87. Bencheikh, Jamel Eddine, Claude Bremond and André Miquel. Mille et un Contes de la Nuit. Bibliothèque des Idées. Paris: Gallimard, 1991.


88. Campbell, Kay Hardy, Ferial J. Ghazoul, Andras Hamori, Muhsin Mahdi, Christopher M. Murphy, & Sandra Naddaff. The 1001 Nights: Critical Essays and Annotated Bibliography. Mundus Arabicus 3. Cambridge, Mass.: Dar Mahjar, 1983.


89. Caracciolo, Peter L., ed. The Arabian Nights in English Literature: Studies in the Reception of The Thousand and One Nights into British Culture. London: Macmillan, 1988.


90. Chauvin, Victor. La Récension Égyptienne des Mille et Une Nuits. Bruxelles: Office de Publicité / Société Belge de Librairie, 1899.


91. Chauvin, Victor. Bibliographie des ouvrages arabes ou relatifs aux arabes publiés dans l’Europe chrétienne de 1810 à 1885. 12 vols. Liège: H. Vaillant-Carmanne, Leipzig: O. Harrassowitz, 1892-1922.


92. Chebel, Malek. Psychanalyse des Mille et Une Nuits. 1996. Petite Bibliothèque Payot. Paris: Editions Payot & Rivages, 2002.


93. Eliséef, Nikita. Thèmes et motifs des Mille et Une Nuits: Essai de Classification. Beirut: Institut Français de Damas, 1949.


94. Gerhardt, Mia I. The Art of Story-Telling: A Literary Study of the Thousand and One Nights. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1963.


95. Ghazoul, Ferial Jabouri. The Arabian Nights: A Structural Analysis. Cairo: Cairo Associated Institution for the Study and Presentation of Arab Cultural Values, 1980.


96. Ghazoul, Ferial J. Nocturnal Poetics: The Arabian Nights in Comparative Context. Cairo : The American University in Cairo Press, 1996.


97. Glubb, John Bagot. Haroon al Rasheed and the Great Abbasids. London: Hodder, 1976.


98. Hamori, Andras. On the Art of Medieval Arabic Literature. 1974. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1975.


99. Irwin, Robert. The Arabian Nights: A Companion. London: Allen Lane, 1994.


100. Kilito, Abdelfattah. L’oeil et l’aiguille: Essai sur “les mille et une nuits.” Textes à l’appui: série islam et société. Paris: Editions la Découverte, 1992.


101. Kritzeck, James, ed. Anthology of Islamic Literature: From the Rise of Islam to Modern Times. Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, 1964


102. Lahy-Hollebecque, Marie. Schéhérazade ou L’éducation d’un Roi. 1927. Collection Destins de Femmes. Paris: Pardès, 1987.


103. Lane, E. W. Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. 1836. Ed. E. Stanley Poole. Everyman’s Library 315. London: Dent, New York: Dutton, 1963.


104. Larzul, Sylvette. Les Traductions Françaises des Mille et Une Nuits: Études des versions Galland, Trébutien et Mardrus. Précédée de “Traditions, traductions, trahisons,” par Claude Bremond. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996.


105. Lichtenstadtler, Ilse. Introduction to Classical Arabic Literature, with Selections from representative Works in English Translation. 1974. New York: Schocken Books, 1976.


106. Lynch, Enrique. La Lección de Sheherazade. Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 1987.


107. Mahdi, Muhsin. The Thousand and One Nights. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995.


108. Marzolph, Ulrich, & Richard van Leeuwen, with the assistance of Hassan Wassouf, ed. The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia. 2 vols. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2004.


109. Marzolph, Ulrich, ed. The Arabian Nights Reader. Series in Fairy-Tale Studies. Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University Press, 2006.


110. Mathers, Edward Powys, trans. The Anthology of Eastern Love. 12 vols in 4. London: John Rodker, 1927-30.


111. May, Georges. Les Mille et une nuits d’Antoine Galland, ou le chef d’oeuvre invisible. Paris: P.U.F., 1986.]


112. Naddaff, Sandra. Arabesque: Narrative Structure and the Aesthetics of Repetition in the 1001 Nights. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1991.


113. Nicholson, Reynold A. A Literary History of the Arabs. 1907. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1969.


114. Pinault, David. Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights. Studies in Arabic Literature 15. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992.


115. Ranelagh, E. J. The Past We Share: The Near Eastern Ancestry of Western Folk Literature. London: Quartet, 1979.


116. Shah, Idries, ed. World Tales: the Extraordinary Coincidence of Stories Told in All Times, in All Places. 1979. London: Octagon P, 1991.


117. Ullah, Najib. Islamic Literature: An Introductory History with Selections. New York: Washington Square P, 1963.


118. Weber, Edgard. Imaginaire Arabe et Contes Erotiques. Collection Comprendre le Moyen-Orient. Paris: Editions L’Harmattan, 1990.


119. Yohanna, John D., ed. A Treasury of Asian Literature. Readers Union. 1958. London: Phoenix House, 1960.

As you can see, I've been collecting books in this area for quite some time. The above list of major translations doesn't include all the retellings and abridgements I own (though if you'd like to check them out, they're all listed here. I think it includes all the major translations in most European languages - though with the notable exception of the various versions in Spanish: Vicente Blasco Ibañez's translation of Mardrus (1923), Rafael Cansinos-Assens (1960), Juan Vernet (1964-67) and Juan A. G. Larraya & Leonor Martínez Martín (1965).

The essential thing to note about them is that there are two major manuscript traditions: the Syrian (exemplified by Galland, and codified in Muhsin Mahdi's 1984 critical edition of the 14th century Ms. Galland). The best version of this in English is Husain Haddawy's 1990 translation of Mahdi. It's distinguished by intricacy and literary complexity, notably in such stories as "The Tale of the Hunchback" or "The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad."

The second major manuscript tradition, the Egyptian (generally known as ZER: for "Zotenberg's Egyptian Recension) is much later, reaching its final elaboration in the late eighteenth, early nineteenth century, before being fixed in its present form by the 1835 Bulaq edition of the Arabic text. This is much longer and more compendious than the Syrian tradition, but appears to have been created largely to meet European demands for a "complete" text of the 1001 Nights, already well known from Galland's translation. The most complete translation of this version is Burton's, but probably the most convenient to read is Malcolm and Ursula Lyon's 2008 Penguin Classics edition.

There are many excellent critical books on the Nights, as you can see from the list above. If I had to recommend just one, though, it would be Andras Hamori's 1974 On the Art of Medieval Arabic Literature, for its brilliantly innovative analysis of the narrative complexity of such stories as "The City of Brass" and (once again) "The Three Ladies of Baghdad." There's much useful information (and good bibliographies) in Peter L. Caracciolo's The Arabian Nights in English Literature: Studies in the Reception of The Thousand and One Nights into British Culture (1988), though.

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Peter L. Caracciolo: The Arabian Nights in English Literature (1988)