Scheherazade's Moral Matrix of the 1001 Nights a Dissertation Submitted

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Bound Infinities: Scheherazade’s Moral Matrix of The 1001 Nights A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Literature by Michael James Lundell Committee in charge: Professor Alain J.-J. Cohen, Chair Professor Steven Cassedy Professor Lisa R. Lampert-Weissig Professor Michael Provence Professor Oumelbanine Zhiri 2012 Copyright Michael James Lundell, 2012 All rights reserved. The Dissertation of Michael James Lundell is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: Chair University of California, San Diego 2012 iii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my father James H. Lundell iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page…………………………………………………………............... iii Dedication……………………………………………………………………….. iv Table of Contents………………………………………………………………... v Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………….... vi Vita………………………………………………………………………………. x Abstract………………………………………………………………………….. xi Introduction……………………………………………………………………… 1 Scheherazade the Jariya: Revisiting the Frame Story of The 1001 Nights……... 18 Dislocating Scheherazade: The 1001 Nights, Paratextuality, and the Illusion of a Static Orientalist Text…………………………………………………………….. 52 Pasolini’s Splendid Infidelities: Film Versions of The Thousand and One Nights and Their Unresolved Issues………………………………………………………….. 90 The Trouble with Burton: 20th Century Criticism and the Dismissal of History… 122 Irish Nights Entertainments: Ulysses and The 1001 Nights……………………... 170 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………... 198 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………… 206 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Nothing in this dissertation would have been possible without the assistance, interaction and past scholarship of so many others. I would like to extend a special thank you to my chair, Alain J.-J. Cohen, who is an exemplary teacher, lecturer, mentor, scholar, professor and sharer of so much it is impossible to begin to pay back the debt of gratitude I owe to him. My committee members were all equally informative, patient and illuminating in many regards and showcased the true wealth and worth of UCSD’s Literature and History departments. Nina Zhiri’s insights and commentary and reactions to my work were guiding and revelatory in significant ways. Lisa Lampert-Weissig’s detailed editorial and research-oriented suggestions were specific and useful in clarifying my message. Steven Cassedy’s knowledge, questions and suggestions on the late 19th/early 20th century time period’s relationship to my dissertation were irreplaceable. And Michael Provence’s deep understanding of Middle Eastern History complemented the historical framework that much of my study is situated within. Graduate seminars, other interactions and teaching assistantships at UCSD brought me deep into the inner workings of the academy and I had the privilege of learning so much from the many different arenas of thinking of Rosaura Sanchez, vi Rosemary George, Michael Davidson, John Blanco, Rae Armantrout, Dayna Kalleres, Todd Kontje, Yingjin Zhang and Anthony Edwards. I am proud to have been a part of a cohort of PhD students that still is talked about as one of the most contentious ever in the history of the Literature department, and I thank each one of them for being themselves and allowing me the privilege of their company. An important thank you goes also to the many people who truly run things, the administrators, who have included Ana Minvielle, Dawn Blessman, Nancy Ho-Wu, and significantly Thom Hill, who has been a vital component of my progress during my PhD, not only administratively but also personally. San Diego State University also contained gems of teachers and mentors in Carey Wall, whose mantra of “be specific” I have incorporated as mine in my teaching, Joanne Meschery whose patient advice and personal friendship I have a deep gratitude for, Clare Colquitt, who provided mentorship in the multiple future corridors of the PhD, and Sherry Little, whose graduate seminar on James Joyce was the most rigorous and rewarding literature course I have ever taken anywhere. A special thanks to Ghada Osman of SDSU, whose inspiration, guidance, advice and mentorship greatly exceeded her position. My undergraduate professors at UC Berkeley were deeply inspirational figures (even if they, or I, didn’t know how fully at the time) in my own desire to continue toward becoming a professor and include Steven Goldsmith, Yusef Komunyakaa, Robert Hass and Donald Friedman, whose three-hour lecture on the first two lines of Paradise Lost was a revelatory defining moment in my development as an academic. I owe thanks to the many professors, students, and authors who I have contacted or who have contacted me online due to my blog, The Journal of The 1001 Nights, vii including most of all Paul Nurse, JC Byers, Moti Kagan, Samer Ali, Aida Yared, Dwight Reynolds, Jack Ross, and a special thank you to Burton biographer Mary Lovell for her generous responses to my many emails and for introducing me to Elaine Imady, who, along with her grandson and I, spent a most adventurous day tracking down the potential location of the Burton’s house in Damascus, Syria. I would also like to thank the Huntington Library for their accessibility to their incredible holdings. I would also like to thank Elise Franssen for her excellent paper on my Nights panel at MESA and for her continued interest and support in Nights studies. My growth as an academic comes from my years of teaching as well. A special thank you goes to the students of my Revelle College Humanities Writing sections, some of the most brightest, enthusiastic and optimistic people I’ve ever had the privilege of working and talking with, and who have truly been an inspiration both personally and professionally. Stephen Cox, director of Revelle Humanities, is a manager whose leadership should be modeled after by everyone, and whose advice and support has always been first rate. John Hoon Lee, Assistant Director of Revelle Humanities and frequent lecturer, has been one of the most supportive, encouraging, inspirational and invigorating figures in my life. Pam Clark provided the personal and professional support that any employee could hope for, and a safe haven to recuperate my thoughts between sections. My friends and fellow graduate students and teaching assistants have provided the kind of friendship, support, and casual psychotherapy anyone needs in order to do anything, and I thank all of them. A special thank you, it goes without saying, to Ryan Heryford. My family in San Diego and elsewhere has given me the support and viii friendship that only they can give. To my wife, Khamisah and my children Beatrice and Theodore, thank you for your patience, love and encouragement. I wouldn’t have been able to do anything without you. ix VITA 1993 Bachelor of Arts, University of California, Berkeley 2005 Master of Fine Arts, San Diego State University 2012 Doctor of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego x ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Bound Infinities: Scheherazade’s Moral Matrix of The 1001 Nights by Michael James Lundell Doctor of Philosophy in Literature University of California, San Diego, 2012 Professor Alain J.-J. Cohen, Chair “Bound Infinities: Scheherazade’s Moral Matrix of The 1001 Nights” is the first study that positions the multiple variants of the Nights as separate texts, and ones that should be treated in literary studies as such. This is an important notion because the Nights has long been seen as one insufficiently defined work of literature. By researching each variant on its own merits much more literary and cultural history is revealed, and new, richer understandings of postcolonial, translation and semiotic studies are highlighted. xi This dissertation looks through the lens of the Nights via an examination of the oldest “G-manuscript” of the Nights and its sexualized contents, paratextual amendments of the European Nights of the 19th century by Edward Lane and Richard Burton, fantastical elements of the Nights of the 18th century Galland version and its English translation known as “Grub Street”, film versions of the Nights of the 20th century, and Orientalist and postcolonial theory. I argue, in part, that Orientalism has been so often misapplied to the Nights that it has wrongly embedded it into a discourse that obscures its identity. I end with an examination of a modernist “version” of the Nights: James Joyce’s Ulysses. My overall intent is to clarify what the Nights is, detach it from misapplied Orientalist discourse, and to demand an elucidation in future Nights studies that specific versions and their idiosyncratic identities are addressed as a primary focus of any study involving the Nights. The study intersects with semiotics, cognitive linguistics, film studies, translation studies, psychoanalysis and postcolonial theory but its main goal is to resituate the Nights into a truly transnational context unfettered by a culturally embedded identity. xii Introduction This dissertation is an exploration of some major versions of the text known commonly as The 1001 Nights, also as The Arabian Nights, but also by many variants, hereafter referred to simply as the Nights. The study consists of several possible answers to many of the questions I had when beginning to study The 1001 Nights. First, what was this work, exactly? Many speak about it but few do so without being general. Secondly, how do the parts of the Nights reflect its sense of identity,

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