Term Paper on "1001 Nights the Arabian"

Term Paper 4 pages (1262 words) Sources: 1 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

1001 Nights

The Arabian Nights and the Divine Comedy

The greatest works of literature of all times are loaded with profound ethical and religious meanings. This is the case with the Arabian Nights, one of the greatest and most spectacular folkloric works of all times as well as with Dante's Divine Comedy. Although the two works pertain to very different cultures and are nurtured by different religious beliefs, the essence of the moral lesson they teach is similar. Interestingly, both of these majestic and extremely ambitious works of art end with a similar conclusion: the supremacy of love as the main virtue which can unite man with God.

The Arabian Nights are one of the most significant and majestic works of the Islamic culture. Its unforgettable stories and its exotic, fantastic scenery form one of the most enduring literary monuments. Moreover, the work is replete with moral lessons and important spiritual illumination. In the fabulous universe of the Arabian Nights everything seems possible and the great creator of the world fills the world with his bounty. The richness of the text and its extremely symbolic structure offer a wealth of interpretations. Storytelling itself is one of the ways in which virtue and moral truth are taught in the book. It is not therefore accidental that the narrative has a symbolic form and that it is divided according to the number of nights in which Scheherazade tells her stories to the king. If the number of nights or the temporal duration of the story is relatively well-defined (one thousand nights and one night), the number of stories is infinite. Notably, the text is not divided according to the number of stories. Scheherazade begins a story one night and finishes it in another, becoming demurely silent every time the dawn shines through the window. Thus, the thread of the stories is cut and then knotted again. Moreover, the stories are interrupted by other stories that erupt in their middle, projecting the meanings infinitely. The story within story form is extremely significant as it points to the belief in the healing or purging power of storytelling and of the imagination in general.

In the Arabian Nights thus the moral lessons are told through storytelling. Moreover, the bigger frame of the story is also very significant: Scheherazade uses her storytelling almost like a magical power to trick the king into postponing her doom. Betrayed by his first wife, king Shahryar has lost his faith in love and his trust in people and determines to wed every night a new young woman and to kill her before the dawn comes, thus taking revenge on women in general. These gruesome killing are stopped by the wise and shrewd Scheherazade who fascinated the king with the addictive power of her stories. It is thus obvious that the stories the king hears during the one thousand and one nights have a healing spiritual power. At the end of the one thousand and one nights, Scheherazade shows the king his three very young children she has borne to him during this time, and entreats him for her life for the sake of the children. The miracle and force of this revelation works its effect on the king who not only grants Scheherazade her life but also determines to forget his anger and revert to true understanding and to the divinity: "Then she ceased to speak, and when King Shahryar heard her speech and profited by that which she said, he summoned up his reasoning powers and cleansed his heart and caused his understanding revert and turned to Allah Almighty and said to himself: 'Since there befell the Kings of the Chosroes more than that which hath befallen me, never whilst I live shall I cease to blame myself for the… READ MORE

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