| Abstrakt: |
The hunchback’s tale is regarded as the narrative masterpiece of the oldest part of theArabian Nights. This article does not, however, deal with its most effective parts, but with the inefficient tale (narrated by the Christian merchant) chosen by Théophile Gautier in his “Thousand and Second Night.” Gautier deliberately builds on this supposedly clumsy narrative the tale of his chronicler, a fictitious portrait of Gautier himself, yielding to Scheherazade, who implores him for a story in Paris. Masquerading as a bungling storyteller, he masters literary creation in lively dialogue with the original, just as the desperate Scheherazade proves a fine critic of theNights’ fortune in translation. Gautier’s irony and meta-literary allusions reveal the modern conditions of storytelling in a changing world of printed matter, particularly newspapers and journals, and jest with the marvelous and the fantastic. Furthermore, the article calls attention to the part the inefficient tales may play in theNightsthemselves, suggesting a parallel between the hunchback and the barber on one hand, Scheherazade and Gautier on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
