The supernatural and the magic in The Thousand and One Nights

• Grant number: 13/15737-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: October 01, 2013
• End date: March 31, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature
• Principal Investigator: Mamede Mustafa Jarouche
• Grantee: Christiane Damien Codenhoto
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to analyze the supernatural and magical elements available in the constitutive narratives of the oldest collection of the Thousand and One Nights, which was dated approximately in the 19th century, and the tales added to the book in the 18th century by its first translator, Antoine Galland. Since he acquired the manuscript, which is considered currently to be the oldest and the best one, the French orientalist not only translated the oldest collection of tales of the book, but also added new tales whose manuscripts were not found so far, for this reason, they were called "orphan tales". Comparing the tales belonging to the oldest collection of the book and the ones written by Galland, we conclude that the supernatural and magical beings play various roles transmitting different moral values and sociocultural conceptions. For this reason, we aim to identify, describe and analyze the roles of these elements in the narratives, taking into consideration their importance while generating the intrigue and the way they create meanings along the two narrative cycles built in various sociocultural contexts. After selecting the narratives in which the supernatural and magical elements play more influential roles in the storyline, we chose 25 tales as a corpus allowing us to observe clearly the role changes of the elements in each text. Finally, as we did previously during the master degree, we want to diffuse the results of this research as a book in order to contribute to the critical studies on The Thousand and One Nights in Brazil.

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

CODENHOTO, Christiane Damien. The supernatural and the magic in The Thousand and One Nights. 2017. Doctoral Thesis - Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD) São Paulo.