What's the difference between all this A Thousand and One nights, Arabian Nights, The Thousand Nights and One Night ??
Is the Burton translation still available?
Is a simpler COMPLETE version available?
anything you can tell me would be super highly appreciated!!
I'm pretty sure all the books are the same, so you dont have to worry about that (and all the stories are online anyways, so you dont have to search for them that much), as for the Burton tranlation..i dont even know about it.
shareThe first translations where made at times where catholicism was infecting the western society. although the original Arabian Nights stories where filled with erotism, the translators suppressed this references to match with the sex-repressed society of their times.
I don't know if a new translation has been made now, i think so, Burton may have done it considering his personnality and his relation to the society, but i'm not sure.
ah; Thanks
shareThe first translation was in 1704, sometime after the Protestant Reformation. And Sir Richard Burton's translation wasn't until the 19th century, and being a noble Englishman, it is to be sure he was a member of the Church of England(again, Protestant).
Lastly, without the Catholic Church, Western Civilization would not have made so many achievements.
On further investigation, I rented the Legends of The Arabian Nights documentary by A&E. According to the documentary, when Sir Richard Burton translated it, he actually sexed up the book to make better sales, turning the beloved tales into Victorian-era smut. So, downgrading the sexuality of the Arabian Nights is actually a bunch of balony from whoever posted originally, claiming the Church censored it. In the end, it was actually sexually enhanced.
I have a strange book of the Arabian Nights tales that I think is just a literal translation - I can hardly understand it, although the words are English. It's just not anglisized, the stories take place in the context and with the cultural references common to the place they were created. Way too much for a moderately educated white girl from this young country. I suspect unless you can read it in the original language there's no way to know the scope of the sex and violence of the original stories. Translators always have to use the references the audience will relate to, imo.
That said - I *loved this program, which I just finished watching tonight for the first time. The writing, directing, acting, production values - I especially liked the costumes - all exquisitely enjoyable.
It was fun to recognize Sherahzad (sp?) as Shara (sp?) from the movie Stargate. She carried this series along very well I thought.
Cheers.
oh ok; thanks
shareThey're all the same, just given a different title.
share[deleted]
The Sir Richard Burton translation is supposed to be very graphic by Victorian standards. I think the first translations were done by a French man who tailored them to appeal to the 18th century French court. Burton went back to the original tales and translated them with the original eroticism. Later translations have been more sedate.
shareu can see an online version at
http://www.candlelightstories.com/Stories/ArabianPage.asp
im just gonna print the stories out and make it into a book,since they r public domain. :)
I know it's been a REALLY long time since you wrote this.. but yes. There are complete modern sets of the Burton translation available, but they are rather pricey. And there are some ORIGINAL sets available, but that's beyond what is even thinkable for the average person. I've seen a picture of one of those sets. And Sir. Burton was not exactly the most prudish person for the time period, so yeah, the early editions were heavily moderated by Victorian society, as a matter of fact, edited by his wife after his death.
There are some really good biographies out there on Sir Burton as well, which I would recommend in connection with the tales. It is a beautiful compendium of stories.. one of my favorite.
And I particularly liked this TV mini-series when I saw it.
Good Evening, Everyone!!!
I just finished watching "Arabian Nights" on SciFi channel.
I truly enjoyed it!!! My only complaint...too many commercial
breaks. But, I've waited to see this in its entirety since 2000.
I'm very pleased with the production. It was absolutely gorgeous!!!
Just wanted to let you know that there is a saying that if one
finishes all the books of the Arabians Nights Tales, they will die.
So, that being said, there are literally hundreds of stories that
comprise what we call "The Arabian Nights".
With best regards!!!
this the arabic version of 'the ring'? lol
yeh....sultan shahriar will execute u :) hehe
i loved watching this. and i'm keen to read the original stories, but the "original" stories are translated into victorian age english, which isnt the best to read magical stories in....plus are tooo long....and different sources are missing different stories..... and some have one story interwoven with different stoires from each source.
so.....its almost impossible to see what order a person is meant to read many of the stories in the middle.
Yup. The only difference is in the name. Actually, in other languages, there is only one name for the book. In English, however, it has a bunch of names.
shareHey there,,,
Interesting question… I've actually read the original version of the book in Arabic when I was in fourth grade and it's so long it took me a month to finish it,,, and it's quite unlike the movie version. You see,,, they took the concept of the book or the main idea of it(: Schariar killing his wives one after the other after discovering the infidelity of his first wife and then came Scheherazade and started telling him all of these fascinating tales),,, but instead of telling the many long stories that Scheherazade really told they told some other shorter and well known stories that actually came a long time after the "Alf layla wa layla" book (which is the title in Arabic meaning a thousand and one nights ). As for the <Burton translation> ,,, I've no idea what that is… hope what I said helps…and,yeah,,, you might wanna know that there were so many little mistakes in the whole process of the making of this movie like morgiana ,,, it's really morjana (which means coral) ,,, but who cares,,, the movie is a joy to watch,,, it's wonderful…
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There are different volumes and different translations. The original stories are very graphic...often times involving sex and violence such as dismemberment, etc.
Like any fairy tales, I prefer these graphic versions as they are more true to the original stories vs. the sugar coated versions.
The Burton translation is in the public domain. You can download it here: http://www.burtoniana.org/books/1885-Arabian%20Nights/index.htm.
share