1. Andrew Lang & Joseph Jacobs
English Fairy Tales
Andrew Lang & Joseph Jacobs

2. Joseph Jacobs (1854-1916) Born in Australia Educated in England
Died in USA (citizen after 1900)
Jewish historian and scholar
English Fairy Tales    1890
Celtic Fairy Tales    1892
More English Fairy Tales    1894
More Celtic Fairy Tales    1894
Indian Folk and Fairy Tales    1912
European Folk and Fairy Tales   1916

5. Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books
Scottish writer and critic
Twelve collections of fairy tales
Published between 1889 and 1910.
437 tales from a broad range of cultures and countries
Extremely influential!
First time in English for many tales
He and his wife did a lot of translating and retelling

6. Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books

8. The Victorian Era Queen Victoria reigned from 1837 to 1901.
It was a long period of local peace, prosperity.
Refined sensibilities
National self-confidence for Britain
Height of the British colonial Empire
Very conservative morally
Industrial revolution
Technical advances
On the heels of romanticism
Coincides with the first Golden Age of Children’s literature

9. Jack and the Beanstalk

10. What do you think?
What is Jack like? What are his main qualities (at different places in the story)?
Why does Jack return a second and third time?
Is it wrong for Jack to steal from the ogre?
What do you think about the ending?
How can this story relate to real life?

11. More about the story Jack. common name, from fool to clever trickster
Cow stopped giving milk. Weaning. Jack needs to grow up.
Man knows Jack’s name. implies a bigger story.
Beans. A common person’s food.
No dinner. Childish punishment. Relates to crime
A stairway to heaven. Like Tower of Babel, Budha’s Bodhi tree, Yggdrasil the South American world tree.
Ogre’s wife seems to like Jack. Charmed by him?
Hides in oven. Womb. Transformed. Resurrected.

12. More still
Some version make Jack righteous by saying that the giant murdered Jack’s father and stole his treasure.
Jack returns the second time for money, the third time because he is not satisfied.
Story alludes to other Jacks. Jack Robinson and Jack and Jill from the nursery rhyme.
The story recalls the Bible story of David and Goliath (a giant defeated by a youth)
Most versions do not end with Jack marrying a princess.

13. The foolish trade

14. The beanstalk

15. In the ogre’s/giant’s home

16. The giant climbs down

17. Death of the giant

18. Jack and the goose

19. The Arabian Nights or 1001 Nights
Western Traditions
Antoine Galland
Richard Burton
Andrew Lang

20. What do you think? What do you like about the story?
What do you think is Scheherazade's greatest accomplishment?
What do you think about Scheherazade's sister and father? Do they deserve praise?
How do you think westerners view Asian cultures? Are there any general tendencies?
Do you like the story structure of having stories inside stories inside stories?
How are these stories unique compared to Grimm and Perrault's?

21. Background
The stories of the Arabian Nights were written by many people over the course of hundreds of years.
Early 8th Century: Core stories from Persia and India.
Translated into Arabic and given the name Alf Layla or The Thousand Nights (although the number of stories wasn’t close to that).
9th or 10th Century in Iraq: Arab stories were added.
13th Century, tales were added of Syrian & Egyptian origin.
18th Century: Galland adds tales in the first major European (French) translation.

22. Background First collected stories written AD 800–900
Stories come from the Middle East and South Asia. The roots of many tales can be traced back to mythology and the cultures of such areas ass Arabia, Yemen, India, Persian, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria and Asia Minor.
Some of the most famous stories appear to have been added to the collection in European editions by Galland.
"Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp,"
"Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," and
"The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor.”
These particular stories are probably genuine Middle Eastern folk tales but were not part of the "Nights" in its Arabic versions, but were interpolated into the collection by its early European translators.

23. Important Versions
The first European version of the Book of the Thousand and One Nights ( ) was translated into French by Antoine Galland from an Arabic text and other sources. This was a 12-volume book.
Edward Lane: First major edition in English.
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (1885) by Sir Richard Francis Burton, was ten-volume translation of Galland (he added six more volumes later). Though printed in the Victorian era it contained erotic nuances of the source material. He avoided strict Victorian laws on obscene material by printing a private edition for subscribers only.
The Arabian Nights' Entertainments, edited by Andrew Lang (1898), was one volume, heavily edited for children and illustrated by H. J. Ford.

24. The Frame Story
Details differ, but Scheherazade is always the daughter of the Grand-Vizier and willingly marries the sultan, thus beginning the stories.
The different versions have different individually detailed endings (in some Scheherazade asks for a pardon, in some the king sees their children and decides not to execute his wife, in some other things happen that make the king distracted) but they all end with the king giving his wife a pardon and sparing her life.

25. Ford’s Illustrations from The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments
Frontispiece
Scheherazade, Dinarzade, and the Sultan
The Sultan pardon’s Scheherazade

26. Ford’s illustration (1898)
The Genius and the Merchants
The Princess veils herself when she sees the Monkey

27. Images from Sinbad’s Voyages

28. More of Ford’s illustrations
The genius comes out of the jar
The king of China looks at the ring on the princess's finger.

29. Ford’s illustrations from Aladdin
The slave of the ring appears to Aladdin
Aladdin's mother brings the slaves with the forty basins of gold before the sultan.

30. Exotic Otherness
The US and other Western countries have a history of viewing people of color differently, often assuming them to be closer to nature, theoretically “better” because they are less civilized. (In much the same way Rousseau viewed children as “wise”).
Edward Said calls this “Orientalism”

31. Orientalism (Edward Said)
patronizing Western attitude toward middle eastern, north African and Eastern cultures.
Tends to portray “eastern” cultures as
Less civilized, less developed
More pure, closer to nature
More barbaric, dangerous
Exciting, exotic
Feminine, sensual, erotic

32. A collection of memorable images from The Arabian Nights

33. Exotic imagery excited Western minds
The Sultana Held Conversation with a Man. Arabian Nights - Illustrated by Virginia Frances Sterrett. Penn Publishing Company, 1928.

34. Disney’s Aladdin Oh I come from a land, from a faraway place;
Oh I come from a land, from a faraway place;
Where the caravan camels roam
Where it's flat and immense, And the heat is intense
It's barbaric, but hey, it's home
Original first verse ( ):
Oh I come from a land, from a faraway place
Where they cut off your ear, If they don't like your face

35. When the wind's from the east
And the sun's from the west
And the sand in the glass is right
Come on down
Stop on by,
Hop a carpet and fly
To another Arabian night
Arabian nights
Like Arabian days
More often than not
Are hotter than hot
In a lot of good ways
'Neath Arabian moons
A fool off his guard
Could fall and fall hard
Out there on the dunes