Volume I of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, translated by Sir Richard Francis Burton and first published in 1885, serves as a seminal entry point into one of the most iconic collections of Middle Eastern and South Asian folk narratives—the Arabian Nights or Alf Layla wa-Layla. This initial volume sets the stage for the intricate narrative framework, introduces the principal framing story, and presents several embedded tales that reveal the cultural, moral, erotic, and political textures of the Islamic Golden Age and its literary imagination.
At the heart of Volume I lies the frame narrative of King Shahryar and his virtuous, eloquent bride Scheherazade. Betrayed by his first wife, Shahryar takes to marrying virgins and executing them each morning, until Scheherazade volunteers herself and postpones her death night after night by spinning captivating stories. This metafictional conceit not only structures the entire compendium but serves as a powerful allegory of storytelling's redemptive and civilizing function. Burton's translation emphasizes this with a blend of exoticism, philological rigor, and an unmistakable Victorian fascination with sexuality, ritual, and the Orient.
Volume I introduces tales such as "The Tale of the Trader and the Jinni," "The Fisherman and the Jinni," and "The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad," each marked by a recursive narrative style where stories unfold within stories—a technique known as mise en abyme. These embedded tales are rich with magical elements, moral dilemmas, commercial ethos, and social satire. They offer insights into pre-modern Islamic society's values—honor, justice, hospitality, wit, and divine retribution—while also indulging the reader in fantasy and sensual pleasure.
Burton's rendering is notable for its elaborate archaic diction and copious use of footnotes, annotations, and appendices. He incorporates an extensive range of cultural details, including etymologies, religious practices, erotic customs, and anthropological observations. His style mirrors the eclecticism of the source material, but it also reflects the Victorian preoccupation with the "Other"—Orientalism as theorized by Edward Said. Burton's commentary often veers into ethnographic territory, sometimes veiling prurience under scholarly inquiry.
Importantly, Burton's translation is distinct from earlier versions, such as those by Antoine Galland, for its perceived unexpurgated honesty. Where Galland romanticized and sanitized the tales, Burton insisted on preserving their erotic, violent, and theological intensity. However, his translation is also a product of his era—imbued with the biases of 19th-century colonialist and orientalist thought. Nevertheless, Burton's work remains influential both as literature and as an artifact of cross-cultural translation.
Volume I thus performs multiple functions: it entertains, educates, preserves, and transforms. It reveals a dynamic interplay between East and West, orality and literacy, and desire and death. As the inception of a ten-volume enterprise, it is foundational in establishing the narrative economy and cultural imagination that would influence countless writers, from Coleridge and Poe to Borges and Rushdie. The volume is a labyrinth of voices, each story acting as both an escape and a return—an eternal deferral of finality, just like Scheherazade's own fate.
In sum, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume I, as translated by Sir Richard Burton, is a complex artifact of Victorian Orientalism and a luminous vessel of Arabic storytelling tradition. Its aesthetic and cultural significance lies in its capacity to continually enchant, provoke, and perplex across centuries and civilizations.
1100287098
At the heart of Volume I lies the frame narrative of King Shahryar and his virtuous, eloquent bride Scheherazade. Betrayed by his first wife, Shahryar takes to marrying virgins and executing them each morning, until Scheherazade volunteers herself and postpones her death night after night by spinning captivating stories. This metafictional conceit not only structures the entire compendium but serves as a powerful allegory of storytelling's redemptive and civilizing function. Burton's translation emphasizes this with a blend of exoticism, philological rigor, and an unmistakable Victorian fascination with sexuality, ritual, and the Orient.
Volume I introduces tales such as "The Tale of the Trader and the Jinni," "The Fisherman and the Jinni," and "The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad," each marked by a recursive narrative style where stories unfold within stories—a technique known as mise en abyme. These embedded tales are rich with magical elements, moral dilemmas, commercial ethos, and social satire. They offer insights into pre-modern Islamic society's values—honor, justice, hospitality, wit, and divine retribution—while also indulging the reader in fantasy and sensual pleasure.
Burton's rendering is notable for its elaborate archaic diction and copious use of footnotes, annotations, and appendices. He incorporates an extensive range of cultural details, including etymologies, religious practices, erotic customs, and anthropological observations. His style mirrors the eclecticism of the source material, but it also reflects the Victorian preoccupation with the "Other"—Orientalism as theorized by Edward Said. Burton's commentary often veers into ethnographic territory, sometimes veiling prurience under scholarly inquiry.
Importantly, Burton's translation is distinct from earlier versions, such as those by Antoine Galland, for its perceived unexpurgated honesty. Where Galland romanticized and sanitized the tales, Burton insisted on preserving their erotic, violent, and theological intensity. However, his translation is also a product of his era—imbued with the biases of 19th-century colonialist and orientalist thought. Nevertheless, Burton's work remains influential both as literature and as an artifact of cross-cultural translation.
Volume I thus performs multiple functions: it entertains, educates, preserves, and transforms. It reveals a dynamic interplay between East and West, orality and literacy, and desire and death. As the inception of a ten-volume enterprise, it is foundational in establishing the narrative economy and cultural imagination that would influence countless writers, from Coleridge and Poe to Borges and Rushdie. The volume is a labyrinth of voices, each story acting as both an escape and a return—an eternal deferral of finality, just like Scheherazade's own fate.
In sum, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume I, as translated by Sir Richard Burton, is a complex artifact of Victorian Orientalism and a luminous vessel of Arabic storytelling tradition. Its aesthetic and cultural significance lies in its capacity to continually enchant, provoke, and perplex across centuries and civilizations.
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night
Volume I of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, translated by Sir Richard Francis Burton and first published in 1885, serves as a seminal entry point into one of the most iconic collections of Middle Eastern and South Asian folk narratives—the Arabian Nights or Alf Layla wa-Layla. This initial volume sets the stage for the intricate narrative framework, introduces the principal framing story, and presents several embedded tales that reveal the cultural, moral, erotic, and political textures of the Islamic Golden Age and its literary imagination.
At the heart of Volume I lies the frame narrative of King Shahryar and his virtuous, eloquent bride Scheherazade. Betrayed by his first wife, Shahryar takes to marrying virgins and executing them each morning, until Scheherazade volunteers herself and postpones her death night after night by spinning captivating stories. This metafictional conceit not only structures the entire compendium but serves as a powerful allegory of storytelling's redemptive and civilizing function. Burton's translation emphasizes this with a blend of exoticism, philological rigor, and an unmistakable Victorian fascination with sexuality, ritual, and the Orient.
Volume I introduces tales such as "The Tale of the Trader and the Jinni," "The Fisherman and the Jinni," and "The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad," each marked by a recursive narrative style where stories unfold within stories—a technique known as mise en abyme. These embedded tales are rich with magical elements, moral dilemmas, commercial ethos, and social satire. They offer insights into pre-modern Islamic society's values—honor, justice, hospitality, wit, and divine retribution—while also indulging the reader in fantasy and sensual pleasure.
Burton's rendering is notable for its elaborate archaic diction and copious use of footnotes, annotations, and appendices. He incorporates an extensive range of cultural details, including etymologies, religious practices, erotic customs, and anthropological observations. His style mirrors the eclecticism of the source material, but it also reflects the Victorian preoccupation with the "Other"—Orientalism as theorized by Edward Said. Burton's commentary often veers into ethnographic territory, sometimes veiling prurience under scholarly inquiry.
Importantly, Burton's translation is distinct from earlier versions, such as those by Antoine Galland, for its perceived unexpurgated honesty. Where Galland romanticized and sanitized the tales, Burton insisted on preserving their erotic, violent, and theological intensity. However, his translation is also a product of his era—imbued with the biases of 19th-century colonialist and orientalist thought. Nevertheless, Burton's work remains influential both as literature and as an artifact of cross-cultural translation.
Volume I thus performs multiple functions: it entertains, educates, preserves, and transforms. It reveals a dynamic interplay between East and West, orality and literacy, and desire and death. As the inception of a ten-volume enterprise, it is foundational in establishing the narrative economy and cultural imagination that would influence countless writers, from Coleridge and Poe to Borges and Rushdie. The volume is a labyrinth of voices, each story acting as both an escape and a return—an eternal deferral of finality, just like Scheherazade's own fate.
In sum, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume I, as translated by Sir Richard Burton, is a complex artifact of Victorian Orientalism and a luminous vessel of Arabic storytelling tradition. Its aesthetic and cultural significance lies in its capacity to continually enchant, provoke, and perplex across centuries and civilizations.
At the heart of Volume I lies the frame narrative of King Shahryar and his virtuous, eloquent bride Scheherazade. Betrayed by his first wife, Shahryar takes to marrying virgins and executing them each morning, until Scheherazade volunteers herself and postpones her death night after night by spinning captivating stories. This metafictional conceit not only structures the entire compendium but serves as a powerful allegory of storytelling's redemptive and civilizing function. Burton's translation emphasizes this with a blend of exoticism, philological rigor, and an unmistakable Victorian fascination with sexuality, ritual, and the Orient.
Volume I introduces tales such as "The Tale of the Trader and the Jinni," "The Fisherman and the Jinni," and "The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad," each marked by a recursive narrative style where stories unfold within stories—a technique known as mise en abyme. These embedded tales are rich with magical elements, moral dilemmas, commercial ethos, and social satire. They offer insights into pre-modern Islamic society's values—honor, justice, hospitality, wit, and divine retribution—while also indulging the reader in fantasy and sensual pleasure.
Burton's rendering is notable for its elaborate archaic diction and copious use of footnotes, annotations, and appendices. He incorporates an extensive range of cultural details, including etymologies, religious practices, erotic customs, and anthropological observations. His style mirrors the eclecticism of the source material, but it also reflects the Victorian preoccupation with the "Other"—Orientalism as theorized by Edward Said. Burton's commentary often veers into ethnographic territory, sometimes veiling prurience under scholarly inquiry.
Importantly, Burton's translation is distinct from earlier versions, such as those by Antoine Galland, for its perceived unexpurgated honesty. Where Galland romanticized and sanitized the tales, Burton insisted on preserving their erotic, violent, and theological intensity. However, his translation is also a product of his era—imbued with the biases of 19th-century colonialist and orientalist thought. Nevertheless, Burton's work remains influential both as literature and as an artifact of cross-cultural translation.
Volume I thus performs multiple functions: it entertains, educates, preserves, and transforms. It reveals a dynamic interplay between East and West, orality and literacy, and desire and death. As the inception of a ten-volume enterprise, it is foundational in establishing the narrative economy and cultural imagination that would influence countless writers, from Coleridge and Poe to Borges and Rushdie. The volume is a labyrinth of voices, each story acting as both an escape and a return—an eternal deferral of finality, just like Scheherazade's own fate.
In sum, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume I, as translated by Sir Richard Burton, is a complex artifact of Victorian Orientalism and a luminous vessel of Arabic storytelling tradition. Its aesthetic and cultural significance lies in its capacity to continually enchant, provoke, and perplex across centuries and civilizations.
4.99
In Stock
5
1
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night
Related collections and offers
4.99
In Stock
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940184589367 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Sir Richard Francis Burton |
| Publication date: | 05/22/2025 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
From the B&N Reads Blog