Bibliographies of A Thousand and One Nights and the Formation of Modern Nationhood: A Study in Comparative Print Culture by Rasoul Aliakbari A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Comparative Literature University of Alberta © Rasoul Aliakbari, 2017 Aliakbari ii ABSTRACT: This doctoral dissertation examines the print cultures of the Arabian Nights (aka A Thousand and One Nights) in Britain, the US, Egypt, and Iran, variably from the late eighteenth to the twenty first centuries. This examination, by way of textual analysis, contextual and historical scrutiny, and digital bibliographic examination and compilation, demonstrates the various usages of the Arabian Nights in modern nation-formation projects in the above-said contexts, challenges Benedict Anderson’s homogenous and solid notion of nation-building, and shows the occurrence of this phenomenon in a heterogeneous modality at the intersection of literary Orientalism, social classes, discourses, gender, and trans-regional dialectics. The chapter on the Arabian Nights in Britain demonstrates how this publication was aimed at non-elite readers to expand bourgeois readership and to bolster the notions of Englishness and Britishness across lower social strata during the nineteenth century. The chapter on US’s history of the Arabian Nights documents and examines the re-mediation, trans-mediations, and uses of this story collection in printed materials in designating national American subjectivity while territorial expansionism, technological upsurge, consumerism, political reconfiguration were under way during the antebellum period. In the chapter on Egypt, the renewed significance of the Arabian Nights is explained by reference to female writers’ repurposing of its tales in forging modern Arabian and Egyptian role models for their female readers on the emerging national landscape in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Iran’s chapter demonstrates the usage of the Arabian Nights by literary and cultural elites, starting from before the mid- nineteenth century to date, to perpetuate the nationalist discourse of Perso-centrism, and simultaneously shows the Ottoman and Indian grounds via which the Arabian Nights had been taken to Persia/Iran in the nineteenth century. The dissertation brings to light under-documented histories of the Arabian Nights, shows the utilizations of the story collection in nation-formation Aliakbari iii projects in the selected cultures of modernity, challenges Anderson’s unnuanced theorization of modernity, and ultimately suggests a new scholarly framework, namely comparative print culture, at the crossroads of print culture and comparative literatures studies for future investigations of print modernities. Aliakbari iv PREFACE An early version of Chapter Two has appeared as “The Arabian Nights in the English Popular Press and the Heterogenization of Nationhood: A Print Cultural Approach to Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities” in Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée, vol. 43, no. 3, 2016. An early version of Chapter Three is forthcoming as “American Aladdins and Sinbads: Critical Bibliographic Examination of the Arabian Nights for Antebellum Nationhood” in Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-tale Studies, vol. 31, no. 2 (Fall 2017). A very early version of Chapter Five was published as a book chapter: “Iranian Literary Modernity, Critical Regionalism, and the Print Culture of A Thousand and One Nights” in Unsettling Colonial Modernity: Islamicate Contexts in Focus, edited by Siavash Saffari, et al. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017. Aliakbari v DEDICATIONS: To my mom, Robabeh Gholami-Mendi Aliakbari vi ACKNOWLEDGMENT: I feel very fortunate for receiving mentorship, advice, criticism, assistance, resource, encouragement, and/or love from many people and places while composing this dissertation. They include, but are not limited to, my supervisor Gary Kelly; my committee members Mojtaba Mahdavi and Jerry Varsava; my examiners Manijeh Mannani, Carrie Smith-Prei, Ted Bishop, and Ulrich Marzolph; my RA/TA supervisor Irene Sywenky; U of A Libraries including Interlibrary Loan, Denis Lacroix, and Amy Southgate; U of A’s Faculty of Graduate Studies as well as the Graduate Students Association; my family especially my mom Robabeh and my brother Kazem; my friends Hawre Hosseini and Nicola DiNicola, and last but not least, my partner Eden McDonald-Yale. I owe tremendously to all of them. Aliakbari vii Table of Contents Chapter I: Bibliographies of A Thousand and One Nights/Arabian Nights and Heterogeneous Nation-Building....................................................................................................1 I. Thesis................................................................................................................................2 II. Designation of Corpus: The Nights.................................................................................2 III. The Use of Theory: Anderson’s Imagined Communities..............................................6 IV. Frame, Methods, and Research Questions...................................................................13 V. Structuring.....................................................................................................................15 VI. Images .........................................................................................................................17 Chapter II: English Popular Press of the Nights and the Heterogenization of Nationhood...................................................................................................................................22 I. Aims and Scope..............................................................................................................23 II. The Nights and an Evaluation of Anderson’s Homogeneous and Empty Nationhood.........................................................................................................................24 A. Circumstances of the Appearance of Lane’s Translation in Print....................26 III. Official Nationalism and the Nights............................................................................39 IV. Conclusions..................................................................................................................52 V. Appendix.......................................................................................................................55 Chapter III: Heterogenizing Antebellum American Nation-Building through the Print Culture of the Nights....................................................................................................................68 I. Aims and Scope..............................................................................................................69 II. The Nights and its Tales in US Print: An Overview.....................................................75 III. American Aladdins and Sinbads in Popular Print Media............................................78 IV. The Nights and Socioeconomic Elitism......................................................................86 V. The Nights and the Discourse of Transformation.........................................................92 VI. Antebellum Popularity of the Nights, Conclusions, and Future Directions................99 VII. Appendix..................................................................................................................101 Aliakbari viii Chapter IV: Re-Publications and Re-formations of the Nights in Egypt and Gendered Heterogeneous Nationhood ………………………………….……………………………….124 I. Aims and Scope............................................................................................................125 II. Treatment of the Nights in al-Nahḍa Periodicals……………………………............................................................................126 III. Review of Selected Scholarly Studies…………………………...............................130 IV. Reworkings of the Nights by Female Writers………………………………………131 V. The Nights for Women................................................................................................162 VI. Conclusions……………………………………………………………....................176 VII. Appendix..................................................................................................................178 Chapter V: The Print Culture of the Iranian Nights and its Trans-Regional Circumstances: Towards Heterogenizing Modern Iranian Nationhood……………………………..............186 I. Aims and Scope............................................................................................................187 II. An Overview of Aryanism…………………………..................................................188 III. Aryanism in the Iranian Print-Cultural Treatment of the Nights…………………...190 IV. The Nights across the Region and in Iran………………..........................................200 V. Concluding Remarks...................................................................................................223 VI. Appendix....................................................................................................................215 Chapter VI: Conclusions...........................................................................................................252 I. Summaries....................................................................................................................253 II. Further Research Questions........................................................................................255