Metamorphoses of Scheherazade in literature and film

• Published in: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies Vol. 66; no. 3; pp. 402 - 418
• Main Author: OUYANG, WEN-CHIN
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.10.2003; Oxford University Press
• Subjects: Anthropology; Authenticity; Brothers; Culture; Donner, Clive; English literature; Fiction; Genre; Ideology; Knowledge; Literary characters; Literary criticism; Literature; Middle East; Movies; Narratives; Novels; Oral tradition; Postcolonialism; Reading processes; Storytelling; Subjectivity; Tales; Texts; Westerns; Written narratives; Written tradition
• ISSN: 0041-977X; 1474-0699
• DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X03000284

This article traces the metamorphoses of Scheherazade, the heroine of The Thousand and One Nights' frame-tale, in modern fiction and film. It examines these metamorphoses in the context of a discussion of the function of narrative across cultures and disciplines. It looks more particularly at the role of genre ideologies—paradigms of knowledge implicit in generic expectations, ideologies external to genre, and subjectivities in narrative transformation—in transforming the story as it travels in time and across media of expression and cultures. Analysis of the Nights frame-tale, the story of Scheherazade, and its transformations, is further informed by an interrogation of the process of reading ‘texts’ critically. Do genre, ideology and subjectivity inform our readings of ‘texts’? In what ways do paradigms of knowledge perceived as inherent in these categories in turn affect our understanding of story and narrative?