Paper Titles in Periodical
International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences
Volume 59

Subscribe

Subscribe to our Newsletter and get informed about new publication regulary and special discounts for subscribers!

ILSHS > Volume 59 > The Enchanted Storyteller: John Barth and the...
The Enchanted Storyteller: John Barth and the Magic of Scheherazade
< Back to Volume

The Enchanted Storyteller: John Barth and the Magic of Scheherazade

Full Text PDF

Abstract:

During the fifties he was considered to be an existentialist, and absurdist and later a Black Humorist, yet, John Barth proved that he would never subscribe to any specific theory and would make his own world of/about fiction by himself. A traditional postmodernist as some of the critics calls him; he was obsessed with Scheherazade the narrator of the Thousand and one Nights and her art of storytelling. This essay aims to depict Barth’s employment of the frame narrative and embedding structure which are the main devices of Scheherazade’s mystifying narratives. Revealing the architectonic structure of his writing, we would demonstrate how traditional technique can bridge postmodernist aesthetics to recreate and replenish the exhausted materials in writings.

Info:

Periodical:
International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences (Volume 59)
Pages:
65-75
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18052/www.scipress.com/ILSHS.59.65
Citation:
M. Moosavi Majd and N. Elahipanah, "The Enchanted Storyteller: John Barth and the Magic of Scheherazade", International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, Vol. 59, pp. 65-75, 2015
Online since:
September 2015
Authors:
Maryam Moosavi Majd, Nooshin Elahipanah
Keywords:
Embedding, Frame Tale, John Barth, Narrative, Scheherazade
Export:
RIS, BibTeX, Text
Distribution:
Open Access

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

References:

[1] Al-Madani, Yusur. Deconstructing and Reconstructing a Narrative of the Self: John Barth's the Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor., International Fiction Review 26. 1 (1999). Print.

[2] Al-Olaqi, Fahd Mohammed Taleb Saeed. The Influence of the Arabian Nights on English Literature: A Selective Study., European Journal of Social Sciences 31. 3 (2012): 384-96. Print.

[3] Bakhtin, Mikhail M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by Mm Bakhtin (M. Holquist, Ed.; C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans. )., Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981. Print.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/40136453

[4] Bal, Mieke. Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. University of Toronto Press, 2009. Print.

[5] Barth, John. Chimera. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1972. Print.

[6] --. The Friday Book: Essays and Other Nonfiction. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Print.

[7] --. Lost in the Funhouse. Anchor, 2014. Print.

[8] Barth, John, and Arte Johnson. The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor. Little, Brown, 1991. Print.

[9] Bressler, Charles E. Literary Criticism., An Introduction to theory and practice (2007). Print.

[10] Brooks, Peter. Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. Harvard University Press, 1992. Print.

[11] Burton, Richard Francis. A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, Now Entituled the Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: With Introduction, Explanatory Notes on the Manners and Customs of Moslem Men and a Terminal Essay Upon the History of the Nights. Vol. 17: Printed by the Burton Club, 1950. Print.

[12] Connor, Steven. The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism. Cambridge University Press, 2004. Print.

[13] Davis, Cynthia. The Key to the Treasure": Narrative Movements and Effects in" Chimera., The Journal of Narrative Technique (1975): 105-15. Print.

[14] Faris, Wendy B. Scheherazade's Children: Magical Realism and Postmodern Fiction. na, 1995. Print.

[15] Fishburn, Evelyn. Traces of the Thousand and One Nights in Borges., Middle Eastern Literatures 7. 2 (2004): 213-22. Print.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1366616042000236897

[16] Flower, Dean. Not Waving but Drowning., The Hudson Review (1991): 317-25. Print.

[17] Fludernik, Monika. Towards A'natural'narratology. Routledge, 2002. Print.

[18] Fogel, Stanley, and Gordon Slethaug. Understanding John Barth. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990. Print.

[19] Genette, Gérard, and Jane E Lewin. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Cornell University Press, 1983. Print.

[20] Gerhardt, Mia Irene. The Art of Story-Telling. 1963. Print.

[21] Grote, Jason. One Thousand One. Samuel French, Inc., 2009. Print.

[22] Harris, Charles B. Passionate Virtuosity: The Fiction of John Barth. University of Illinois Press, 1983. Print.

[23] Hassan, Ihab. Toward a Concept of Postmodernism., Postmodernism: A reader 152 (1993). Print.

[24] Herman, David. Genette Meets Vygotsky: Narrative Embedding and Distributed Intelligence., Language and Literature 15. 4 (2006): 357-80. Print.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0963947006068654

[25] --. Genette Meets Vygotsky: Narrative Embedding and Distributed Intelligence., Language and Literature 15. 4 (2006): 357-80. Print.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0963947006068654

[26] Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. Routledge, 2003. Print.

[27] Irwin, Bonnie. What's in a Frame? The Medieval Textualization of Traditional Storytelling., Oral Tradition 10 (1995): 27-53. Print.

[28] Irwin, Robert. The Arabian Nights: A Companion. Tauris Parke Paperbacks, 2003. Print.

[29] Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Duke University Press, 1991. Print.

[30] Khan, Jalal Uddin. The Arabian Night: A Modern Introduction., The EFL Journal 4. 2 (2013). Print.

[31] Lewis, Barry. Postmodernism and Literature., The routledge companion to postmodernism (2001): 121-33. Print.

[32] Mackenzie, Ursula. John Barth's Chimera and the Strictures of Reality., Journal of American Studies 10. 01 (1976): 91-101. Print.

[33] Malpas, Simon, and Paul Wake. The Routledge Companion to Critical Theory. Routledge London, 2006. Print.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203412688

[34] Marzolph, Ulrich. Narrative Strategies in Popular Literature: Ideology and Ethics in Tales from the Arabian Nights and Other Collections., Middle Eastern Literatures 7. 2 (2004): 171-82. Print.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1366616042000236860

[35] McHale, Brian. Postmodernist Fiction. Routledge, 2003. Print.

[36] Mernissi, Fatema. Scheherazade Goes West: Different Cultures, Different Harems. Simon and Schuster, 2001. Print.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/40157610

[37] Natoli, Joseph, and Linda Hutcheon. A Postmodern Reader. SUNY Press, 1993. Print.

[38] Ouyang, Wen-Chin. Metamorphoses of Scheherazade in Literature and Film., Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 66. 03 (2003): 402-18. Print.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/s0041977x03000284

[39] Pier, John. Narrative Levels (Revised Version; Uploaded 23 April 2014)., Print.

[40] Poe, Edgar Allan. The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade. BompaCrazy. com, 1850. Print.

[41] Prince, Gerald. A Dictionary of Narratology. U of Nebraska Press, 2003. Print.

[42] Sallis, Eva. Sheherazade through the Looking Glass: The Metamorphosis of The'thousand and One Nights'. Routledge, 2013. Print.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315027555

[43] --. Sheherazade through the Looking Glass: The Metamorphosis of The'thousand and One Nights'. Routledge, 2013. Print.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315027555

[44] Schulz, Max F. The Muses of John Barth: Tradition and Metafiction from Lost in the Funhouse to the Tidewater Tales. Johns Hopkins Univ Pr, 1990. Print.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/2926588

[45] Scott, Steven D. The Gamefulness of American Postmodernism: John Barth & Louise Erdrich. Vol. 10: Peter Lang Pub Incorporated, 2000. Print.

[46] Sim, Stuart. The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism. Routledge, 2001. Print.

[47] Todorov, Tzvetan. The Poetics of Prose., Paris: Ithaca (1977). Print.

[48] --. The Poetics of Prose, Trans., Richard Howard (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1977) 70 (1977). Print.

[49] Waugh, Patricia. Metafiction. Routledge, 2013. Print.

[50] Webster, Mark. Ancient Tale of Sinbad Frame Latest Barth Novel. Cambridge Masssachusetts: The Tech, March 12 Print.

[51] Ziegler, Heide. John Barth (Routledge Revivals). Routledge, 2014. Print.

[52] --. The Tale of the Author or, Scheherazade's Betrayal., (1990). Print.

Show More Hide