This week, I read Arabian Nights, which is a frametale, or a collection of stories that Scheherazade tells to her husband, Sultan Schahriar. These are not just any stories, however: it is a matter of life or death that the Sultana keeps her husband entertained, as the reader sees in the introduction, Scheherazade.
As I read the first story in the unit, The Merchant and the Genius, I was struck by how similar the merchant's and Scheherazade's fates were. They both are facing the threat of death, and they both use the guise of telling stories to put off death a little longer--indeed, Scheherazade frames the stories so that she may continue to do this.
The interesting thing about the frametale is how detailed Scheherazade makes it. In the Hind, the narrator of the story within the story, the first old man, addresses the genie (and this is a running theme throughout, between both the old men and the genie and Scheherazade and the Sultan). It is interesting to see the genie's reaction to the tales and I imagine it is comparable to the Sultan's reaction to the stories.
In the Story of the Fisherman, Scheherazade continues this "story-within-a-story" way of telling her tales, and invents a wily fisherman. No doubt the Sultana is very clever and can dream up a cunning fisherman, as she herself is very witty. At the end of the story, she weaves another level into the storytelling: the fisherman explains to the genie that he cannot trust him and release him from the vase in which he has sealed him once again because he might meet the same fate as a Greek physician--then continues to tell that tale, effectively adding more depth to this frametale. It is interesting to me that Scheherazade is telling these stories to save her life, and previous protagonists in her stories have told their tales to save either their own lives or someone else's, but now the fisherman is simply giving the genie this account to teach him a lesson.
In the story about the Greek King and the Physician Douban, the frametale gets even deeper. As always, Scheherazade is telling the outermost story to the Sultan about the fisherman, who is in turn telling the genie the story about the king and the physician. In this story, the king's vizir becomes jealous of the physician and approaches the king, where the king tells him another story. As I read, I found it a little difficult to keep track of what level the stories were at, but it was like a fun puzzle to backtrack and figure it out.
The last story in this unit was a long one, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp. This tale was an interesting change to the normal story of Aladdin that Disney told. It eliminated (or rather, the Disney version added) the animal sidekicks, and it the original also involved two genies instead of one and a different story line in terms of Aladdin's relationship with the princess. In this tale, there is no forbidden love between street urchin and princess; Aladdin easily wins over the woman's (and her father's) heart with jewels and gold. However, the conflict arises with the evil magician, just as in the Disney movie. Here is where the plots converge: the magician wants control of the genie in the lamp, and Aladdin takes ownership instead, so the villain gets envious. He cunningly tricks the sultana out of Aladdin's old lamp and unfortunately, she innocently gives it to him. However, Aladdin and his wife are wily as well, and devise a way to kill the magician and take the lamp back.
It is here where the story diverges again. It turns out that the magician has an equally evil brother, and he causes the couple grief when he hears about the death of his brother. Luckily, the genie in the ring sees through his tricks and warns Aladdin, and he is able to get rid of the evil for good. Aladdin and the sultana take over the kingdom after her father dies and they live happily ever after.
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