SOURCE: Ghazoul, Ferial J. “Narrative Dialectics.” In Nocturnal Poetics: The Arabian Nights in Comparative Context, pp. 17-28. Cairo, Egypt: The American University in Cairo Press, 1996.

In the following essay, Ghazoul argues that the operational structure of The Arabian Nights consists of four major blocks: the story of Shahrayar as king, Shahrayar as a traveler seeking knowledge, the story of Shaharazad, and the frame story as narrated by the vizier.

Segmentation

Roman Jakobson defined literature as a message centered on its mode of expression. Every literary text poses two questions to the specialist: how is the text generated and what is its final outcome? The answer to the first question, on how the text flows from its beginning to its end, throws light on the message that the text enunciates. The first step, therefore, is to try to understand the essential course of the text.

The Arabian Nights is...