بَوادِر الرّواية كسِلسلة من القصص العجائبيّة القصيرة في ألف ليلة وليلة: "حكاية الحمّال مع البنات" نموذجًا

Abstract

This paper aims to show that the novel, a relatively new genre, has its roots in the long tales of Arabian Nights, constructed as a coherent sequence of short stories with an overarching frame story. This will be demonstrated through “The Tale of the Porter with the Ladies” (ḥikāyat al-ḥammāl maʿ al-banāt). This long tale presents several characters and deals with different themes using what is known today in fiction as "cross-genre writing" (or hybrid genre). This technique blends elements and characteristics from different genres, and thus opposes the conservative view of "pure genre". The text discussed here features elements of the short story and poetry, alongside the fusion of realistic and fantastic writing. Elements of tragi-comedy, i.e., an erotic scene followed by a painful one, are also apparent. The ladies' house becomes a theatre with actors (those who tell their stories) and an audience, accompanied by music and poetry.

Each story can be read as a separate construction, yet its aesthetical significance is much more profound when read as related to the context of the other stories in this complex system of the novel. Hence, this literary work realizes the condition of "emergence" in philosophy, science and art, that speaks of an entity having properties its parts do not have, due to interactions among the parts.

Shahrazād as the narrator, in the third-person form, unites the different stories that are told in the first-person form by the main character in each story. These stories, at the integrative level, are based on the principle of contradictions, comparisons, the interaction between the real and imaginary, and the encounter of humans with the supernatural (magic, genies, a flying horse). The themes dealt with are relevant to the twenty-first century, such as love, brothers' envy, incest, belief in God and Islam being challenged by disbelievers (kuffār), free will confronted by the power of fate and destiny, and military coups against the ruling power.

The overlap of the real and the imaginary is presented through the notion of the uncanny (Freud) and the fantastic (Todorov).