Arabic-L:LIT:1001 Nights Conference CFP

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Sat 13 Sep 2014
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject: 1001 Nights Conference CFP

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1)
Date: 13 Sep 2014
From: "Flanagan, Elizabeth" <elizabethflanagan at fas.harvard.edu>
Subject: 1001 Nights Conference CFP

A Call for Papers

Conference

The Thousand and One Nights: Sources, Transformations, and Relationship
with Literature, the Arts and the Sciences

Harvard University (CMES)  ~ Institut National des Langues et Civilisations
Orientales (CERMOM, ANR MSFIMA)

Cambridge (Boston) - April 15-17, 2015


Organizing Committee:

-       Sandra Naddaff (Harvard University)
-       Aboubakr Chraïbi (INALCO, Paris)
-       William Granara (Harvard University)

         Literary works with many textual sources, having been transformed,
much translated, and exercising wide influences, such as the Thousand and
One Nights, create dense and fluid textual networks. What must we have
read, seen or heard to claim to know the Nights? The oldest and most
comprehensive Arabic manuscript? The Bulaq or Mahdi edition? Burton or
Haddawy’s translations? Poe’s short story? Rabaud’s opera? Mahfouz’s novel?
Borges’s essays? Pasolini’s film? Materials related to the Nights continue
to emerge from many arts, countries, periods, disciplines, and languages,
and their scope continues to widen, making the Nights a universal work from
all points of view.

         Antoine Galland’s French translation published in 1704 had a
tremendous impact and was much imitated in French literature, even
contributing to the creation of a new literary genre (the oriental tale).
It can be argued, by analogy, that the arrival of the Thousand and One
Nights in the Arabic-speaking world in the mid-8th century had a similar
effect on Arabic literature of the period, and that of following centuries.
The book’s interactions with the wider culture would last a thousand years,
the longest period in the text’s history. The testimonies of Ibn al-Nadîm
and Abu ’Abd Allâh al-Yamanî, who explicitly mention Arabic imitations of
the Nights, strongly support this hypothesis. Similarly, the existence of
numerous books closely related to the Nights in terms of content, such as
Kitâb al-Hikâyât al-’Ajîba wa-l-Akhbâr al-Gharîba and the Hundred and One
Nights, shows that this is not a single text but rather a set of texts of a
particular genre, which can be called middle literature and which
circulated in the Arabic-speaking world at the same time as the Nights.

         The simultaneous transformations of the Thousand and One Nights
and their environment often introduce new forms of interaction and promote
the creation of new cultural objects and new research perspectives. From
the 19th century, short stories and novels would gradually dominate the
various forms of literary production, while the Nights would also be
revitalized with new editions (Bûlâq, Calcutta I and II, Breslau, etc.) and
new translations (Lane, Burton, Mardrus, etc.). Always a publishing staple,
the Nights would gradually enter world literature through the great
novelists of the day, from Argentina to Japan, but also other arts, such as
music and cinema from its earliest days (Méliès, 1905; Reiniger, 1926).
Another remarkable transformation relates to contemporary society, namely
the birth of several scientific disciplines, the revival of research tools,
and the richness of interdisciplinary approaches such as sociology,
history, anthropology, psychoanalysis and political philosophy, which have
adopted the Nights as a reference corpus.


In light of the above, we ask the following questions:

First panel: The manuscripts of the Nights and middle Arabic literature:

What could Arabic manuscripts of the Nights represent when compared to
their lost Persian model? What changes have taken place? Have they been
imitated, and by what? Do other texts of Arabic literature resemble the
Nights? What criteria can be used to identify similarities? How do they
differ from other genres, such as the sîra, the folktale or the khabar? In
what ways might they constitute a middle literature?

Second panel: Galland’s translation and the 18th century:

How and why were the Nights transformed when they were published in France?
What type of literature did they represent in the eyes of French readers?
What was their impact on the concept of the “tale”? How was the “oriental
tale” constructed? What were the consequences on French literature, or even
thought and philosophy, of the time?


Third panel: The Nights, world literature and the arts:

Do the Nights, which exploit a series of embedded frame stories to act out
a drama of literary creation, represent a model for the writer and the
artist? Among the Nights’ hundreds of stories which are the most used? Why
and how were these stories selected and transformed? What is the effect, in
turn, on their original texts?

Fourth panel: The Nights, the humanities and the sciences:

How can the Nights be used in other disciplines? How can issues concerning
medieval societies, religions, or political governance be explored through
the Nights? For example, is it possible, in the context of
interdisciplinary research, to use the therapeutic aspects of Shahrazad’s
stories in medicine?

*       *
*

The Center for Middle Eastern Studies’ Working Group on Middle Eastern
Literatures, The Department of Comparative Literature, The Department of
Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University, in
conjunction with Centre de Recherche Moyen-Orient Méditérranée de l'INALCO
(ANR MSFIMA : Les Mille et une nuits : Sources et Fonctions dans l’Islam
Médiéval Arabe), welcomes proposals for papers that fall within one of the
four panel topics outlined above.

Abstracts should be no more than 300 words and should be sent to Professor
Aboubakr Chraïbiat: aboubakr.chraibi at inalco.fr<mailto:
aboubakr.chraibi at inalco.fr> by October 15, 2014.

Papers maybe presented in Arabic, English or French. Email submissions
should be sent in Word format only. Successful proposals should present a
compelling case for the paper and its relation to the conference topic[s].
We ask that all participants stick to a strict twenty minute time period to
allow time for discussion. Please do not send your entire paper and do not
include your personal details on the abstract but rather in a separate
cover letter. All papers will be peer-reviewed and evaluated anonymously.
The Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University, does not require
any conference registration fees, and will provide participants with food
and accommodation while in Cambridge (Boston) USA during the conference.
However, it expects participants to arrange and pay for their own travel to
and from Boston.


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