Marzolph: The Arabian Nights Reader

The Arabian Nights Reader

Edited by Ulrich Marzolph

Series in Fairy-Tale Studies

“An invaluable resource for reading and teaching the Nights. This collection brings together essential commentary and criticism in English from the last sixty years, illuminating both for the study of the Arabic original and to understand the reception of this classic in translation by Euro-American literary historians and creative writers.”

—Margaret Mills, professor of Near Eastern languages and cultures at Ohio State University and author of Rhetorics and Politics in Afghan Traditional Storytelling

 

“Ulrich Marzolph’s The Arabian Nights Reader is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the most famous Oriental collection of fairy tales in the world. Marzolph’s informative introduction provides the framework for these essays, published by some of the best scholars in the field between 1949 and the present. The first comprehensive collection of essays to bring together some of the most significant scholarship on The Arabian Nights, this collection sheds new light on the significance of those wonderful tales that continue to entrance us.”

—Jack Zipes, professor of German at the University of Minnesota and author of Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre

 

“Not since Victor Chauvin and René Basset has a scholar done more for the study of Arabic and Islamic folk literature than Ulrich Marzolph. The Arabian Nights Reader offers an interdisciplinary bird’s-eye view of distinguished scholarship that will intrigue both the specialist and the novice.”

—Hasan El-Shamy, professor of folklore, Near Eastern languages and civilization, and African studies at Indiana University and author of A Motif Index of The Thousand and One Nights