Reading Notes: Arabian Nights Part A

Arabian Nights Part A

Scheherazade is a remarkable character.  She risks her life to ensure that no one else has to die.  She is very clever to tell interesting stories that the sultan will want to hear, so he has a reason to keep her alive.  She tells stories within stories to ensure that the stories continue on longer, to stretch on for days.

There are many themes running through these stories.  There is magic, genies (or geniuses), jealousy, and revenge.  Many of the stories are used as a form of bartering; that hearing an entertaining story is worth trading for something.  Other stories are used as examples, similar to similes or metaphors.  They are an attempt to describe the situation.

I like the idea of having a character tell a story within a story.  Maybe in a rewrite, the story can have someone trading something valuable for an entertaining story.

File:A plain and literal translation of the Arabian nights entertainments, now entitled The book of the thousand nights and a night, volume 1.djvu
A plain and literal translation of the Arabian nights entertainments, Source :Wikimedia Commons

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