ENGLISH 3F03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Silk Road, Scheherazade
4 May 2016
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Document Summary
Structure, protagonists- gender, and setting: space (open-closed), motifs, metaphors, and oppositions. Merchants who travelled the chinese silk route. They"d meet and talk to tell stories. Stories written down between 9th and 14th centuries. 1001 nights suggests luck and fortune, or just signifies many stories. Was translated into french, not really authentic arabic literature. Legend and wonders moving from ancestors to the people of our modern age, and the meaning of the stories to modern people. The story of king shahryar and his brother. Political dimensions - killing of women, perception and representation of women. Frames within frames 3 days 3 wives. First shahzmans wife: sharayar wants to see his brother. Shah zamans wife thinks he is gone already, but he comes back to find his wife with a black man, sexualized black slave (page 4). Shahzaman women are not to be trusted kills wife and lover and leaves them.
