Gear up for a day of “˜Arabian Nights’

For those members of the UCLA community who do not know that the
Disney film “Aladdin” originated within a frame story
about a virgin trying to avoid execution, the English
department’s annual Marathon Reading will be an enlightening
experience. This year’s reading of “The 1,001 Arabian
Nights” will not only be celebrating the marathon’s
10th anniversary, but will also mark the first occasion that a text
not of English origin has been selected.

“The study of literature in English in many ways has been
growing more attentive to issues of ethnicity, race and the history
of empire,” said Elizabeth Goodhue, this year’s
co-chair of the Marathon Reading Committee. “(The marathon)
gives us a chance to offer a strong community-building program to
the students who pass by.”

The story of “The 1,001 Arabian Nights” centers on
Scheherazade, the new young wife of the King Shahyrar of India, who
has a strange habit of keeping his wives alive for only one night
before putting them to death. Scheherazade attempts to postpone her
own execution by weaving interesting, cliffhanging tales for him
each night. He finds her stories to be so compelling that, yearning
to hear more, her death is delayed for 1,001 nights, at the end of
which he is broken of his murderous routine.

Numerous allusions and plot lines have been borrowed from
“Arabian Nights,” including such well-known,
contemporary examples such as the stories of Aladdin, Ali Baba and
his 40 thieves, and the voyages of Sinbad. Ever since the first
translated edition appeared in England in the 18th century,
“Arabian Nights” has seeped into popular culture,
including printing the story in 455 installments over a three-year
period in the London News at the time of its release, as well as
motion pictures, cartoons and children’s books.

“It’s not just that everyone in Victorian England
was reading the “˜Nights,'” said Goodhue.
“Every character in a Victorian novel was too. It persisted
so much through the culture that it became part of other plots as
well.”

While “Arabian Nights” was originally a compilation
of stories in Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Greek, their English
translation from the 18th century is the one that the Marathon
Reading will exhibit. In this way, the 10th anniversary celebration
can focus not only on its first non-English text in conjunction
with a wider sphere of cultural understanding, but also highlight
the main copy among the numerous translations that made its mark
upon the English literary world.

“By the time “˜The Nights’ reached England, it
had been retranslated, reformatted, edited for content, had things
added into it,” said Goodhue. “So the text for this
year’s marathon will be the one that influenced English
culture. Because we chose this translation, it relates to how
England defines and understands itself in relation to various other
peoples, other cultures.”

Choosing “Arabian Nights” for this year’s
Marathon Reading was also about the resources at UCLA. This year a
conference titled “The Arabian Nights in Historical Context:
From Galland to Burton,” will explore the influences that the
more than a dozen translations “Arabian Nights” have
undergone over time, as well as the numerous racial and gender
specific matters raised throughout the tales.

But the decision to read “Arabian Nights” also makes
this year’s marathon more complicated than previous
years.

“It will be very different this year in terms of
production,” Goodhue said. “Normally we do one long
text; last year was “˜Middlemarch,’ but with “˜The
Arabian Nights,’ separate tales will be told throughout the
day. Listeners will have a chance to hear separate stories to their
completion. Also one of the most interesting parts this year is the
effect of restaging the frame story, which involved telling tales
throughout the night. We will be compressing it into just one
night, but it is still the same incarnation of the sharing of
stories until morning.”