| Abstrakt: |
This article examines how the generic pattern of the Thousand and One Nights should be related to other cycles of instructive tales in the Arabic literary tradition and how this pattern is used in the ambitious novel of the 18th century French/Polish author Jan Potócki, Manuscrit trouvé a Saragosse. The conclusions are, first, that the Thousand and One Nights is related to the other works by the technique of interruption, as a structuring principle, but also as a way to create a multi-layered perspective of reality and the suggestion of a rite of initiation. The work is related firmly to the conventions of the genre of the instructive tales for princes, but should at the same time be seen as a parody on its ideological intention. The conventions of the genre are used in a flexible way, however, adding the symbolic meaning of the time-frame and especially of the concept of the night. The Saragossa Manuscript is carefully constructed as a European version of the Thousand and One Nights, using the same generic conventions to represent the worldview of the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, using the concept of the night as a metaphor of a set of binary oppositions, contrasting Christianity and Islam, male and female and reality and illusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
