The Arabian Nights: A Norton Critical Edition

The Arabian Nights: A Norton Critical Edition

<p><strong>This Norton Critical Edition includes twenty-eight tales from <em>The Arabian Nights</em> translated by Husain Haddawy on the basis of the oldest existing Arabic manuscript.</strong></p> Few works of literature are as familiar and beloved as <em>The Arabian Nights</em>. Yet few remain also as unknown. In English, <em>The Arabian Nights</em> is a literary work of relatively recent date―the first versions of the tales appeared in English barely two hundred years ago. The tales are accompanied by a preface, a note on the text, and explanatory annotations.<br /><br /> “Contexts” presents three of the oldest witnesses to <em>The Arabian Nights</em> in the Arabic tradition, together in English for the first time: an anonymous ninth-century fragment, Al Mas‘udi’s Muruj al-Dhahab, and Ibn al-Nadim’s <em>The Fihrist</em>. Also included are three related works by the nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers Edgar Allan Poe, Marcel Proust, and Taha Husayn.<br /><br /> “Criticism” collects eleven wide-ranging essays on <em>The Arabian Nights</em>’ central themes by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Josef Horovitz, Jorge Luis Borges, Francesco Gabrieli, Mia Irene Gerhardt, Tzvetan Todorov, Andras Hamori, Heinz Grotzfield, Jerome W. Clinton, Abdelfattah Kilito, and David Pinault.<br /><br /> A Chronology of <em>The Arabian Nights</em> and a Selected Bibliography are also included.<br /><br />