Ebook: The Arabian Nights: a Companion

Cover; Contents; Preface to the Second Edition; Introduction; 1. Beautiful Infidels; 2. The Book without Authors; 3. Oceans of Stories; 4. The Storyteller's Craft; 5. Street Entertainments; 6. Low Life; 7. Sexual Fictions; 8. The Universe of Marvels; 9. Formal Readings; 10. Children of the Nights; Chronology; Notes; Index.;""The Arabian Nights"" has become a synonym for the fabulous and the exotic. Every child is familiar with the stories of Aladdin, Sinbad the Sailor and Ali Baba. Yet very few people, even specialists in oriential literature, have a clear idea of when the book was written or what exactly it is. Far from being a batch of stories for children, ""The Arabian Nights"" contains hundreds of narratives of all kinds - fables, epics, erotica, debates, fairy tales, political allegories, mystical anecdotes and comedies. It is a labyrinth of stories within stories. Widely held in contempt in the Middle Eas.