Course schedule for the Graduate Certificate in Literature Program, Northwestern University School of Professional Studies - Northwestern School of Professional Studies

Course Schedule

LIT 480-DL : (Re)Reading A Thousand and One Nights Today

Description

How do we read a rich, ancient, and worldly work such as A Thousand and One Nights today? With the translation of A Thousand and One Nights also called in English Arabian Nights, from Arabic into French by the Orientalist Antoine Galland at the beginning of the eighteenth century, something of a revolution occurred in storytelling technique and theories of literary writing. Story upon story, without author or place of origin, these tales were told night after night by a cultured and courageous young woman named Shahrazad to a king bent on killing her in the morning. The cosmopolitan context of the stories together with the innovative strategies devised by its singular narrator not only suggested new directions for literary conception and writing in the West, the translation and the acclaim it received drew the attention of the literary establishments in the Arab and Islamic world as well. The Moroccan writer, Abdelfattah Kilito tells us that until the event of this translation and its subsequent success, this work had received little attention in the Islamic world because it was considered a popular genre and thus not worthy of literary consideration.

This class is dedicated to the legacy of this remarkable work not only as a technique of storytelling and a source of cultural and literary reference for so many writers, but also as a site of critique by contemporary readers. The extent of the work’s adaptation, rewritings, enrichments, and extensions are as infinite as the spirit of the work itself. Therefore, we will carve a limited frame of analysis for ourselves. Since this is one of the most translated works in the history of literature and whose translations have been endlessly debated among scholars since its first French version, we will spend some time discussing these practices of translation, beginning with the work’s title. Simultaneously, we will read selections from the relatively recent English translation as well as some essays on the history of the work. We will then move on to works that engage with Nights either explicitly or implicitly.

(This course may count towards the Comparative and World Literature or Interdisciplinary Studies specializations in the master of arts in literature program. This course may also count towards the Interdisciplinary Studies specialization in the master of arts in liberal studies program. It may also count as a literature course or elective in the creative writing program. Additionally, this course may count towards certificates of graduate studies.)

Note: This course meets weekly online.