1001 Nights, Then and Now

This course explores the origins, performance, reception, adaptation, and translation of The Thousand and One Nights, one of the most beloved and inluential story collections in world literature. An authorless collage built up over centuries, it is an “ocean” of narratives that has much to teach us about how stories work, whether they must come to an end, and our apparently bottomless desire to hear them. In addition to reading the tales themselves and studying their themes and devices, we will delve into the very real history of this curious work and its eccentric interpreters, translators, and readers. Finally, we will consider how the Nights puts pressure on ideas of authorship and originality and enlarges our notion of what a book is – and might be.