A Story From The Thousand and One Nights in Five Versions

The Sexual and Social Discourse in Comparative Context

الملخص

This study examines the sexual discourse of a literary text in a comparative perspective. It focuses on one particular story from The Thousand 4014 One Nights, "The Story of the Third Slave", and the variations inherent in this discourse as they unfold in the process of translation. The study focuses on five versions of the story published in four languages - Arabic, English, French and Hebrew - in seemingly two divergent, mutually exclusive cultures, Eastern and Western. Yet, a comparaison of the sexual discourse(s) does not seem to serve, and in fact undermines, the conventional dichotomy between East and West. Indeed, the similarities of the discourse(s) are at least a potent as their differences. Moreover, the attitude toward sexuality is determined by the specific social and cultural milieu of each and every writer-translator, and not by any civilizational blocks. Finally, there is a clear masculine mentality toward sexuality which permeates all of the Storys versions, Eastern and Western alike.