Editing One Thousand and One Nights (section)

=== Western literature (18th century onwards) ===
==== Galland translations (1700s) ====
[[File:CC No 08 Arabian Nights.jpg|thumb|left|''[[Classic Comics]]'' issue #8]]
[[File:First European edition of Arabian Nights, Les Mille et une Nuit, by Antoine Galland, 1730 CE, Paris.jpg|thumb|First European edition of Arabian Nights, "Les Mille et une Nuit", by Antoine Galland, Vol. 11, 1730 CE, Paris]]
[[File:Arabian Nights, Tousend und Eine Nacht Arabische Erzahlungen, translated into German by Gustav Weil, Vol .4, 1866 CE.jpg|thumb|Arabian Nights, "Tausend und eine Nacht. Arabische Erzählungen", translated into German by Gustav Weil, Vol .4, 1866 CE, Stuttgart]]
The modern fame of the ''Nights'' derives from the first known European translation by [[Antoine Galland]], which appeared in 1704. According to [[Robert Irwin (writer)|Robert Irwin]], Galland "played so large a part in discovering the tales, in popularizing them in Europe and in shaping what would come to be regarded as the canonical collection that, at some risk of hyperbole and paradox, he has been called the real author of the ''Nights''".{{sfn|Irwin|2004|p=14}}

The immediate success of Galland's version with the French public may have been because it coincided with the vogue for ''contes de fées'' ('fairy stories'). This fashion began with the publication of [[Madame d'Aulnoy]]'s ''Histoire d'Hypolite'' in 1690. D'Aulnoy's book has a remarkably similar structure to the ''Nights'', with the tales told by a female narrator. The success of the ''Nights'' spread across Europe and by the end of the century there were translations of Galland into English, German, Italian, Dutch, Danish, Russian, Flemish and Yiddish.<ref>Reynolds pp. 279–281</ref>

Galland's version provoked a spate of pseudo-Oriental imitations. At the same time, some French writers began to parody the style and concoct far-fetched stories in superficially Oriental settings. These [[tongue-in-cheek]] pastiches include [[Antoine Hamilton|Anthony Hamilton]]'s ''Les quatre Facardins'' (1730), [[Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon|Crébillon]]'s ''[[The Sofa: A Moral Tale|Le sopha]]'' (1742) and [[Diderot]]'s ''[[Les bijoux indiscrets]]'' (1748). They often contained veiled allusions to contemporary French society. The most famous example is [[Voltaire]]'s ''[[Zadig]]'' (1748), an attack on religious bigotry set against a vague pre-Islamic Middle Eastern background.{{sfn|Irwin|2004|pp=238–241}} The English versions of the "Oriental Tale" generally contained a heavy moralising element,{{sfn|Irwin|2004|p=242}} with the notable exception of [[William Beckford (novelist)|William Beckford]]'s fantasy ''[[Vathek]]'' (1786), which had a decisive influence on the development of the [[Gothic novel]]. The Polish nobleman [[Jan Potocki]]'s novel ''[[Saragossa Manuscript]]'' (begun 1797) owes a deep debt to the ''Nights'' with its Oriental flavour and labyrinthine series of embedded tales.{{sfn|Irwin|2004|pp=245–260}}

The work was included on a price-list of books on theology, history, and cartography, which was sent by the Scottish bookseller [[Andrew Millar]] (then an apprentice) to a [[Presbyterian]] minister. This is illustrative of the title's widespread popularity and availability in the 1720s.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.millar-project.ed.ac.uk/manuscripts/html_output/6.html|title=The manuscripts, Letter from Andrew Millar to Robert Wodrow, 5 August, 1725. Andrew Millar Project. University of Edinburgh.|website=www.millar-project.ed.ac.uk|access-date=2016-06-03}}</ref>

==== 19th century–20th century ====
The ''Nights'' continued to be a favourite book of many British authors of the Romantic and Victorian eras. According to [[A. S. Byatt]], "In British Romantic poetry the Arabian Nights stood for the wonderful against the mundane, the imaginative against the prosaically and reductively rational."<ref>{{cite book|last=Byatt |first=A. S. |author-link=A. S. Byatt |title=On Histories and Stories: Selected Essays |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-674-00451-1 |page=167}}</ref> In their autobiographical writings, both [[Coleridge]] and [[Thomas de Quincey|de Quincey]] refer to nightmares the book had caused them when young. [[Wordsworth]] and [[Tennyson]] also wrote about their childhood reading of the tales in their poetry.<ref>Wordsworth in Book Five of ''[[The Prelude]]''; Tennyson in his poem "Recollections of the ''Arabian Nights''". (Irwin, pp. 266–269)</ref> [[Charles Dickens]] was another enthusiast and the atmosphere of the ''Nights'' pervades the opening of his last novel ''[[The Mystery of Edwin Drood]]'' (1870).{{sfn|Irwin|2004|p=270}}

Several writers have attempted to add a thousand and second tale,{{sfn|Byatt|2001|p=168}} including [[Théophile Gautier]] (''La mille deuxième nuit'', 1842)<ref name="Encyclopaedia Iranica"/> and [[Joseph Roth]] (''Die Geschichte von der 1002 Nacht'', 1939).{{sfn|Byatt|2001|p=168}} [[Edgar Allan Poe]] wrote "[[The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade]]" (1845), a short story depicting the eighth and final voyage of [[Sinbad the Sailor]], along with the various mysteries Sinbad and his crew encounter; the anomalies are then described as footnotes to the story. While the king is uncertain—except in the case of the elephants carrying the world on the back of the turtle—that these mysteries are real, they are actual modern events that occurred in various places during, or before, Poe's lifetime. The story ends with the king in such disgust at the tale Scheherazade has just woven, that he has her executed the very next day.

Another important literary figure, the [[Irish people|Irish]] poet [[W. B. Yeats]] was also fascinated by the Arabian Nights, when he wrote in his prose book, ''[[A Vision]]'' an autobiographical poem, titled The Gift of [[Harun Al-Rashid]],<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/exhibition/readingeurope/content/ire/NatLibIre_01.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/exhibition/readingeurope/content/ire/NatLibIre_01.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live|title=The Cat and the Moon and Certain Poems by William Butler Yeats}}</ref> in relation to his joint experiments with his wife [[Georgie Hyde-Lees]], with [[automatic writing]], a technique used by many occultists in order to discern messages from the subconscious mind or from other spiritual beings, when the hand moves a pencil or a pen, writing only on a simple sheet of paper and when the person's eyes are shut. Also, the gifted and talented wife, is playing in Yeats's poem as "a gift" herself, given only allegedly by the caliph to the Christian and Byzantine philosopher [[Qusta ibn Luqa|Qusta Ibn Luqa]], who acts in the poem as a personification of W. B. Yeats. In July 1934 he was asked by Louis Lambert, while in a tour in the United States, which six books satisfied him most. The list that he gave placed the Arabian Nights, secondary only to William Shakespeare's works.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=y5GuCwAAQBAJ&q=Yeats+ethel+mannin+arabian+nights&pg=PA291|title=In Excited Reverie: Centenary Tribute to W.B. Yeats|first1=A. Norman|last1=Jeffares | author1-link = A. Norman Jeffares |first2=K. G. W.|last2=Cross|year=1965|publisher=Springer|via=Google Books|isbn=978-1-349-00646-5}}</ref>

Modern authors influenced by the ''Nights'' include [[James Joyce]], [[Marcel Proust]], [[Jorge Luis Borges]], [[John Barth]] and [[Ted Chiang]].

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