Meets with F307.  In 1704 the French Orientalist Antoine Galland
introduced The Thousand and One Nights to the Western World. Few
written or printed documents received more public attention worldwide
than did this compendium of re-written folk narratives and its
Western derivative known as The Arabian Nights. The impact of the
Nights on cultures across the world has been profound. This course
explores a variety of issues related to the work from
interdisciplinary perspectives. These include:

	I. Eastern Thousand Nights and a Night and Western Arabian
Nights
	The Written and the Oral; the Oral Connections
	II. The Format
	The Frame Story
	III. Sheherzad: the Raconteuress as role model.
	What does Sheherzad represent for the contemporary female?
	IV. The Literary Genres in the Two Nights Traditions
	The Novella, the "fairy tale"/Zaubermärchen, the Legend, the
Exemplum, the Cante fable/sîrah, the legend, the Humorous Anecdote,
the Formula tale.
	The Nights in Modern Arts (Cinema, Music, Painting)
	V. Society and Social Relations in the Nights
	Freemen and Slaves
	Race, Species, Ethnicity and Faith
	Male and Female
	Marriage and Concubinage
		Husbands and wives, Men and Save-girls, Parents and
Children, Siblings
	VI. Other Sociocultural Institutions
	Economy, Government, Religion
	VII. Social Theories and Worldviews in the Nights
	VIII. Theoretical framework for the Study of the Nights
(Analyses of Specific Tale Texts)
	Historical Reconstructional, Functional/Sociocultural,
Psychoanalytic, Feminist, Semiotic, ....

Two Take-home Exams; One Term Paper
Attendance and participation are paramount importance

Text Books
	Arabian Nights' Entertainment. Robert L. Mack, ed. (Oxford
University Press: 1995).

	Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies, Vol. 18, No.
2 (2004), Ulrich Marzolph, Guest ed. (Wayne State University Press)