One Thousand and One Nights: A Summary of Early Arabic Literature PDF

GE1904 Introduction Reading Styles and Techniques  These are the styles, systems, or practices in decoding symbols for better comprehension for communication and sharing of information and ideas.  Cognitive Process — the process of think...

GE1904 Introduction Reading Styles and Techniques  These are the styles, systems, or practices in decoding symbols for better comprehension for communication and sharing of information and ideas.  Cognitive Process — the process of thinking and remembering  Decoding — to recognize and interpret information  Deriving — to take, receive, or obtain something from a specified source  Language Acquisition — the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language  Skimming — method of rapidly moving the eyes over text to get only the main ideas and general overview of the content o Pre-reading o Reviewing o Reading  Scanning — finding specific information such as name, date, or fact without reading the entire article  Phrase Reading — a grouping of words that go together to mean something; also known as ‘chunking.’  Non-Prose Reading o Graphs o Diagrams o Charts o Maps  Deep Reading — an active process of thoughtful and deliberate reading to enhance comprehension and enjoyment of a text. Also called “slow reading” Critical Approaches to the Study of Literature  Critical Approaches — are different perspectives we consider when examining a piece of literature. According to Rebecca Hooker. They seek to give us answers to these questions in addition to aiding us in interpreting literature: 01 Handout 1 *Property of STI Page 1 of 2  GE1904 o What do we read? o Why do we read? o How do we read?  Deconstruction — suggests that language is not a stable entity and that we can never exactly say what we mean. Therefore, literature cannot give a reader any meaning because the language is too ambiguous.  Feminist Criticism — this tries to correct a predominantly male-dominated critical perspective with a feminist consciousness. This form of criticism places literature in a social context and employs various disciplines, such as history, psychology, sociology, and linguistics, to create a perspective that considers feminist issues.  Marxist Criticism — is a strongly politically oriented criticism deriving from the theories of the social philosopher Karl Marx. Marxist critics insist that all language use is influenced by social class and economics.  New Criticism — evolved out of the same root theoretical system as deconstructionism, called formalist criticism. This works with the elements of a text-only — irony, paradox, metaphor, symbol, plot, etc. — by engaging in extremely close textual analysis.  New Historicism — focuses on the literary text as part of a larger social and historical context and the modern reader’s interaction with that work.  Psychological Criticism — the basis of this approach is the idea of the existence of human consciousness — those impulses, desires, and feelings about which a person is unaware but which influence emotions or behavior.  Reader-Response Criticism — removes the focus from the text and places it on the reader instead by attempting to describe what goes on in the reader’s mind while reading a text. 01 Handout 1 *Property of STI Page 2 of 2  One Thousand and One Nights The focus of the featured great book One Thousand and One Nights is from the early Arabic Literature. according to Islamic belief, the Qur’an (Arabic for “Recitation”) is 610-632 BC revealed to Muhammad by God. A seven pre-Islamic poems collection written in gold linen dating to the 6th Century were collected and said to be up on the walls of the 8th Century Kaaba at Mecca. These poems are also known as Al-Mu’allaqat (“hung poems”). The stories in rhymed prose related to the encounters of the witty c. 990-1008 Abul-Fath al-Iskanderi were collected. This collection is called Maqamat (“assemblies”) written by Badi’ al-Zaman al Hamadani The Story of Bayad and Riyad was written in Islamic Andalusia. This 13th Century story is about the love of the merchant’s son for the foreign court lady. Folktales are a long part of the tradition over Arab which were orally passed down through many generations. But from the 8th century onwards along with the development of Arabian urban centers and culture under the rule of Islam, distinctions were made between al-fus ‘ha (the refined language taught at educational centers) and al-ammiyah (the language of the common people). Pre-Islamic literature written in the mother tongue – including traditional folktales – fell out of favor of the educated elite. The writers of the Arabic literature focused on poetry and non- fiction and refused to compose imaginary prose. Despite the focus on “high art” of the poetry, the collection of tales called One Thousand and One Nights on the Arabian Nights continued to be popular. This collection was made chaotically over serval centuries and there were not officially accepted as genuine versions of the tales. The One Thousand and One Nights takes the form of a frame narrative, where one story contains another set of stories within it. The framing device is the tale of Scheherazade who averts her fate by withholding the ending of stories she tells to delay her execution by the king. After 1,001 nights, the king confessed that she has changed his soul and pardons Scheherazade. The stories told by Scheherazade contains legendary locations or historical figures such as Haroun al Rashid (c.766-809), ruler of the Abbasid Caliphate during the Islamic Golden Age. The various characteristics of the stories are responsible for the wide variety of genres in the collection – from adventure, romance, fairy tale, to horror, and neve science fiction. It was not until the 18th century that the stories became known in Europe, retold by French scholar Antonine Galland in Les Mille et Une Nuits (1704-17). The manuscript from which Galland translated was incomplete, making it shorter than 1,001 nights worth of stories, so he added the Arabic tales od “Ali Baba”, “Aladdin”, and “Sinbad”. These were never part of the original One Thousand and One Nights.