Reading Notes: Arabian Nights A

Reading Notes: Arabian Nights A

This week I was so excited to read Tales from Arabian Nights, since it is already a topic I am interested in. In fact, my topic brainstorm post describes how I own a personal copy of Tales from the Arabian Nights and would be interested in retelling the story of Aladdin and the Magical Lamp. Since the Aladdin and the Magical Lamp stories are in part B of the reading, I found a few different stories that would be interesting to retell. Since all of these stories seem to be stories within stories I think it would be best to combine the story of Sheherazade with another one of the sub-stories. The story of Sheherezade describes how a young woman. Sheherezade, is destined to be put to death in the morning by a bitter sultan so she must devise a plan to save her own life. Sheherezade ends up telling a story soon before she is supposed to be put to death and the Sultan is so intrigued that he grants her life for another day so that he can hear the end of the story the next evening. Each night Sheherezade continues telling stories, and each time a new character from the story she is telling has another tale to tell. This is what causes the "story within a story." Of the stories that she told, I really enjoyed the story of the Second Old Man and the Two Black Dogs. In this story an old man offers a story in to an angry genie in order to save a young man's life. The story is about a merchant who continually gives his brothers money because he is more successful  and eventually they scheme to kill him for his riches. The old man unknowingly marries a fairy and the fairy turns the brothers into dogs to to punish them for plotting the death of the nice older brother. Although I enjoyed the story, if I were to retell it I would go into more detail on the fairy and the role she played in turning the brothers into dogs.

(Arabian Nights, my personal copy)

Bibliography

The Arabian Nights' Entertainments, Andrew Lang and Illustrated by H.J. Ford