Thursday, October 22, 2009

The Individual Path of Europe and the Book of 1001 Nights' Tales

Europe, the land of a mythology uniquely individual in orientation, distinct from the Orient's member-oriented societal mythology, has accepted and seen become popular one book more than any other from the East, and that is 1001 Nights' Tales. Can you even name another book from the East, (besides the religeous books the Koran, the Confucian Analects, Lao Tzu, and maybe you can name some of the Sanskrit Literature of India, all of which are not stories in focus, but religeous/quasi-religeous dialectics).
Why does this book more than others appeal to the minds of the West? Is it because of the individual-course nature of the tales and the setting of Sherazade? Does it have something to do with the stories in the tales from Egypt and Arabia (not farther east) and their origins? What sort of appraisal do Westerner's give the 1001 Nights' Tales: mere silly escapades, predicaments of a light antical form?
What is the opinion of Eastern people of the 1001 Nights contemporarily and in the past? Were they taken seriously as literature? What was the appraisal of such stories that have individual-themes? I know that because they were written in very commonish prose instead of the high poetry respected in court circles, they suffered in respect (these traits were also a key to their popularity, though). Are they regarded as antics? laughed and looked sort-of down at?

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