Cultural Encounters with the Arabian Nights in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Melissa Dickson

Published by Edinburgh University Press 2019

Cultural Encounters with the Arabian Nights in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Melissa Dickson

In the series Edinburgh Critical Studies in Victorian Culture

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474443661

Overview
Contents

About this book

An overview of the cultural transmission of the Arabian Nights within nineteenth-century Britain

Fresh readings of canonical texts such as Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Charles Dickens’s Hard Times and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland
Diverse primary sources analysing the presence of the Arabian Nights in distinct areas of cultural production: constructions of childhood, archaeological and geological science, theatrical display, and exhibitions

Aladdin, Sinbad, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Scheherazade winding out her intricate tales to win her nightly stay of execution: the stories of the Arabian Nights are a familiar and much-loved part of the English literary inheritance. But how did these tales become so much a part of the British cultural landscape?

Dickson identifies the nineteenth century as the beginning of the large-scale absorption of the Arabian Nights into British literature and culture. She explores how this period used the stories as a means of articulating its own experiences of a rapidly changing environment. She also argues for a view of these tales not as a depiction of otherness, but as a site of recognition and imaginative exchange between East and West, in a period when such common ground was rarely found

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
List of Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	vi
A Note on the Text Publicly Available Download PDF	viii
Series Editor’s Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 1 ‘For a time their world made mine’: Childhood Encounters with the Arabian Nights Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	19
Chapter 2 Underground Palaces and Castles in the Air: The Realms and Ruins of the Arabian Nights Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	61
Chapter 3 The Magical Metropolis Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	108
Chapter 4 Magic and Machines at the Great Exhibition Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	141
Chapter 5 Epilogue: A New Arabian Nights Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	174
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	188
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	209

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 232
Illustrations
- Other: 10 B/W illustrations
Keywords: Literary Studies

eBook

Published: March 24, 2022
ISBN: 9781474443661