Arabian Nights
1
5.6
- proper noun
- Literature
:
Las mil y una noches
- He just translated the Arabian Nights into Italian.
Examples
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To confirm that sexual love is dangerous to society at large, the unknown authors of the Arabian Nights drew a portrait of a civilized female—unlike that of the Box Woman.
Academic text (2018) -
Burton's translation remains the most widely read English version of The Arabian Nights.
Fiction book (2000) -
The structural function of the frame story of the Arabian Nights as well.
Academic text (1991) -
Did Boccaccio perhaps hear about the Box Woman in the frame story of the Arabian Nights?
Academic text (2018) -
Something from the Arabian Nights, now, full of magicians and monsters?
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They attended the Opera House to see a performance of Arabian Nights.
Academic text (2001) -
We are reminded of the games played by the three ladies of Baghdad and the porter in the Arabian Nights.
Academic text (1991) -
A few dips into Burton's Arabian Nights in the library stacks had stirred his imagination, but the fruit of knowledge was not offered until he made a trip to the Mediterranean as a graduate student.
Fiction book (1993) -
There has been little critical discussion regarding the frame story's structural characteristics and its thematic implications: a remarkable gap, perhaps, if one considers the prominence of The Arabian Nights in world literature.
Academic text (1991) -
As a child, I was enchanted by the tales of Arabian Nights, full of adventure and magic.
Synonyms
A famous book of stories from the Middle East and South Asia
A collection of Arabic folk tales from the Middle East, also called Arabian Nights
A collection of old Arabic stories called The Thousand and One Nights
Surface Forms
Morphology
The parts 'Arabian' (pertaining to Arabia) and 'nights' (evenings) do transparently suggest a concept relating to nights in an Arabian context, so learners can guess a thematic meaning. However, the phrase is a conventional title for a specific literary collection (One Thousand and One Nights) and that specific encyclopedic referent is not fully predictable from the parts alone, so it is only partially transparent to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Arabian Nights gets its name from a famous old book of stories where a clever woman, Scheherazade, told a new tale each night to the king so he would not kill her. These nightly tales, called 'One Thousand and One Nights', are full of magic and adventure, and that is why Arabian Nights means the well-known collection of magical Middle Eastern stories.