Oral Storytelling Elements Still Clear In The Thousand Nights

and One Night

By Me.

Warning: Mainly Concerned With Sex and Genies

What is the Nights?

Genies

History of the Nights

Don´t Read The Last of the Nights.

It´s Got Oral Storytelling Traces in it, Homies.

It´s also got Genies.

The Tale of King Shahryar and of His Brother, King Shazaman

The Blessing• AS ALLAH WILLS!

• IN THE NAME OF ALLAH,• THE MERCIFUL, THE COMPASSIONATE!

• Praise be to Allah, master of the Universe! And prayer and peace upon the Prince of Messengers, Muhammad, our lord paramount!

And upon all his people prayer and peace for ever until the judgement day!

• And afterwards! May the legends of the men of old be lessons to the people of our time, so that a man may see those things which befell others beside himself: then he will honour and consider carefully the

words and adventures of past peoples, and will reprove himself.• Also glory be to him who preserved the tales of the first dwellers to

be a guide for the purpose of the last!• Now it is from among these lessons that the stories called The

Thousand Nights and One Night are taken; together with all that there is in them of wonder and instruction.

Ong´s Points

• Oral cultures and oral storytellers are:• i. Additive rather than subordinative• ii. Aggregative rather than analytic• iii. Redundant or ‘copious’• iv. Conservative or traditionalist• v. Close to the human lifeworld• vi. Agonistically toned• vii. Empathetic and participatory rather than objectively

distanced• viii. Homeostatic• ix. Situational rather than abstract

ALSO:

• Oral memory works well with ´heavy´characters

• Bizarre figures and formulary number groupings are memory aids for storytellers

And Dudes:

• Poetry and proverbs are useful for remembering and handing down knowledge

So let´s see if any of these oral storytelling qualities are in the

Nights!!!

• And more specifically in The Tale of King Shahryar and of His Brother, King Shazaman

Shahryar and Shazaman

• ´Dude, I´m so close to the human lifeworld right now.´

• ´Man, I´m hella Aggregative rather than analytic.´

Infidelity!!!!

Jinni

• Or ´Genius´

Jinni Boning.

´How many times did you cheat on me?´

´Only 570 times! I had to! That number is a formulary memory aid!´

´Isn´t ´one´ easier to remember than 570?´

´Uh... Look! A blimp!´

• ‘When Shahryar entered his palace, he caused his wife’s head to be cut off at the neck, and in the same way the heads of the slaves, both men and women. Then he ordered the wazir to bring him every night a young and virgin girl, whom he ravished and, when the night had passed, caused to be slain. This he did for three long years; so that the people were all one cry of grief, one tumult of horror. They fled away with such daughters as remained to them; and in all the city there remained not one girl who retained the state to serve for this assault.´

Shahrazad and Dunyazad

A New Story

• The Fable of the Ass, the Bull and the Husbandman

Shahrazad and Shahryar

1139 Deaths (all murders)

• 2 queens, forty slaves, 2 black lovers and 1095 deflowered virgins.

1096 Virgins Ravished (1095 of them killed)

• Three years´ worth of Virgins, plus Shahzarad

1141 Sex Acts

• 1096 Virgins deflowered, twenty slaves sleeping with twenty slaves, two queens sleeping with two black slaves and two kings sleeping with one Jinni´s prisoner. This doesn´t include the 570 times the Jinni´s prisoner stepped out on the Jinni before the kings came along.

13 Allahs

• Allah is mentioned by various characters 13 times. Not including the blessing at the start.

One Jinni

Consider for homework: Is one enough?

One Story-Within-A-Story

• The Fable of the Ass, the Bull and the Husbandman is within The Tale of King Shahryar and of His Brother, King Shazaman, which itself has 1001 nights´worth of stories within it.

The Thousand Nights and One Night:

•It´s Quite A Book.

A brief mention of propaganda.

And Discourse.

So do you think there are traces of oral storytelling in these

adventures?

Correction: Do you think there are traces of oral storytelling in these

sexy adventures?

Because there are. And that´s it.

Storytime?

Turkish Bath at My Place, 9 O´Clock

• Bring a sponge, a towel and some kind of scented soaps.

• BYOE*• 1095 high-breasted

virgins are optional, but they are always certainly welcome.

• *BYOE: Bring Your Own Eunuch