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Podcast: EMPIRE LINES
Episode: Fifth Edition of Les Mille et Une Nuit (The Thousand and One Nights), Antoine Galland (1729)
Description: Dr. David Damrosch intertwines imperial expectations in 18th century Europe with Middle Eastern realities, in Antoine Galland's Les Mille et Une Nuit, or The Thousand and One Nights.
Filled with flying carpets and trapped genies, the tales of Aladdin, Ali Baba, and Scheherazade might seem little more than bedtime stories. But the tales of The Thousand and One Nights iwere born out of the real experiences of 8th century Middle Eastern empires, evolving at the crossroads of Sassanid Persia, Abbasid Baghdad, and Ottoman Cairo and Damascus. Published in 18th century Paris, Galland's epochal French edition brought the...