Literary and cultural aspects of 1001 Nights and other popular narratives (epics, legends, folktales) in the Arab world.

Literary and cultural aspects of 1001 Nights and other popular narratives (epics, legends, folktales) in the Arab world. The purpose of this course is, first, to examine in detail a representative body of Arab popular narrative as a living tradition: What is the significance of verbal art as it is performed in present day social and cultural contexts? Second, it is to introduce students to methodological approaches (structuralist, semiotic, formalist, contextualist, performative and others) to the study of folk narrative. The Arab world maintains side-by-side rich traditions of oral and written literatures. Although the course will focus on folk and popular narrative, the effect that the existence of a literate population has on verbal art as a process and a product will also be considered. The course will study how and to what degree verbal art in general, and narratives in particular, can be studied as mirrors of culture. What is the relationship of folk and popular narrative to other verbal art forms, and how does folk narrative reflect or comment upon Arab society and culture of a given time and place? Sample readings may include 1001 Nights (selections), Antar (selections), Folktales of Egypt, The Social Use of Metaphor by Shapir and Crocker (selections), and The Domestication of the Savage Mind by Goody.