The Thousand and One Nights and World Literature in the Twentieth Century

Date: March 4, 2021, 21:15 - 22:15
Location: Live Webinar on Zoom

It is gradually being acknowledged that the Arabic story-collection Thousand and OneNights has had a major influence on European and world literature. In this lecture, we will examine the influence of the Nights, as an intertextual model, on 20th century prose literature from all over the world. Several authors will be discussed whose work has been crucial in the shaping of the main trends in 20th century literature, such as modernism, magical realism and postmodernism. Several themes and narrative strategies will be examined set in their narratological, literary-historical and political contexts. It will be argued that the case of the Thousand and One Nights represents a quintessential example of the mechanisms of intertextuality and the development of what can be called ‘world literature’.