Scheherazade’s Children: Global Encounters with the Arabian Nights

484 Pages·2013·6.09 MB·English

by  Philip F. Kennedy and Marina Warner (eds.)

Scheherazade’s Children
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Scheherazade’s Children
Global Encounters with the Arabian Nights
Edited by Philip F. Kennedy and Marina Warner
a
Copublished with the
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS New York University
New York and London Abu Dhabi Institute
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
www.nyupress.org
© 2013 by New York University
All rights reserved
References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing.
Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs
that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Scheherazade’s children : global encounters with The Arabian Nights /
edited by Philip F. Kennedy and Marina Warner.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4798-4031-1 (cl : acid-free paper)
ISBN 978-1-4798-5709-8 (pb : acid-free paper)
1. Arabian nights. 2. Scheherazade (Legendary character) I. Kennedy, Philip F.,
editor of compilation. II. Warner, Marina, 1946 – editor of compilation.
PJ7737.S44 2013
398.22 — dc23 2013007849
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.
We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials
to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books.
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Also available as an ebook
Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction 1
Philip F. Kennedy and Marina Warner
Part I: Translating
1 The Sea-Born Tale: Eighteenth-Century English
Translations of The Thousand and One Nights and the
Lure of Elemental Difference 27
Ros Ballaster
2 Re-Orienting William Beckford: Transmission, Translation,
and Continuation of The Thousand and One Nights 53
Laurent Châtel
3 The Collector of Worlds: Richard Burton, Cosmopolitan
Translator of the Nights 70
Paulo Lemos Horta
Part II: Engaging
4 The Porter and Portability: Figure and Narrative in the Nights 89
Elliott Colla
5 The Rings of Budur and Qamar al-Zaman 108
Wendy Doniger
6 White Magic: Voltaire and Galland’s Mille et une nuits 127
Roger Pearson
7 The Arabian Nights and the Origins of the Western Novel 143
Robert Irwin
>> v
vi << Contents
8 “A Covenant for Reconciliation”: Lane’s Thousand and
One Nights and Eliot’s Daniel Deronda 154
Paulo Lemos Horta
9 Translating Destiny: Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s
“Tale of the 672nd Night” 172
Dominique Jullien
10 Borges and the Missing Pages of the Nights 195
Philip F. Kennedy
11 The Politics of Conversation: Denis Diderot, Elio Vittorini,
Manuel Puig, Masaki Kobayashi, Vasily Grossman 218
Katie Trumpener
12 Sindbad the Sailor: Textual, Visual, and Performative
Interpretations 243
Ferial J. Ghazoul
Part III: Staging
13 The Arabian Nights in British Pantomime 265
Karl Sabbagh
14 The Arabian Nights in Traditional Japanese Performing Arts 274
Yuriko Yamanaka
15 “Nectar If You Taste and Go, Poison If You Stay”:
Struggling with the Orient in Eighteenth-Century
British Musical Theater 282
Berta Joncus
16 Scheherazade, Bluebeard, and Theatrical Curiosity 322
Elizabeth Kuti
17 The Takarazuka Revue and the Fantasy of “Arabia” in Japan 347
Tetsuo Nishio
18 Thieves of the Orient: The Arabian Nights in
Early Indian Cinema 362
Rosie Thomas
Contents >> vii
Afterword: My Arabian Superheroine 395
Alia Yunis
List of Stories 401
Selected Bibliography 409
About the Contributors 429
Index 435
The illustrations appear in two groups, following pages 176 and 224.
For information about the illustrations, see the list of illustrations on
page ix.
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Illustrations
Color Figures
1. M. M. Samarkandi and M. Sharif, A Reader in the World of Stories,
miniature, Iran, seventeenth century (© RMN-Grand Palais / Art
Resource, NY)
2. François de Troy, The duchesse du Maine, circa 1700, Musée des
Beaux-Arts d’Orléans. During the last days of the reign of Louis
XIV Louise-Bénédicte de Bourbon, the duchesse du Maine (1676 –
1753) presided over a rival court at the Château de Sceaux, where,
in the summers of 1714 and 1715, she threw a celebrated series of
all-night parties known as the nuits blanches, or “white nights.”
At one of these parties, Voltaire entertained the duchesse and her
guests by telling them the story “The One-Eyed Porter,” a wittily
allusive and innuendo-rich spoof of Antoine Galland’s newly
popular Mille et une nuit. (© Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Orléans)
3. Catherine Lusurier, after Nicolas de Largillière, portrait of Voltaire
(François-Marie Arouet; 1694 – 1778), at age thirty. Voltaire’s earliest
recorded prose tale was prompted by the Arabian Nights, and
Galland’s Oriental tales were one of his principal models in the
1740s when he began to publish a series of philosophical stories,
beginning with Zadig and including The Princess of Babylon
and The White and the Black. Candide concludes on a note of
Islamic wisdom in Constantinople, where East meets West. Like
Scheherazade herself, Voltaire found storytelling a powerful
weapon against tyranny and prejudice. (© RMN-Grand Palais / Art
Resource, NY)
4. Sir Joshua Reynolds, portrait of William Beckford, 1782. That year,
Beckford wrote, “Arabian Tales spring up like mushrooms on the
fresh green downs of Fonthill” (MS Beckford e.1, fol. 100, Beckford
Papers, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford). (© National
Portrait Gallery, London)
>> ix