The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade E-Book

Edgar Allan Poe

• Herausgeber: SAMPI Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 27

Beschreibung

In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade", Scheherazade tells a story to the king that includes scientific and technological wonders, deviating from traditional themes. Her description of inventions and discoveries, although fantastic, is met with incredulity, leading to an unexpected outcome.

Leseprobe

The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade

Edgar Allan Poe

SYNOPSIS

In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade", Scheherazade tells a story to the king that includes scientific and technological wonders, deviating from traditional themes. Her description of inventions and discoveries, although fantastic, is met with incredulity, leading to an unexpected outcome.

Keywords

Imagination, Exploration, Satire

NOTICE

This text is a work in the public domain and reflects the norms, values and perspectives of its time. Some readers may find parts of this content offensive or disturbing, given the evolution in social norms and in our collective understanding of issues of equality, human rights and mutual respect. We ask readers to approach this material with an understanding of the historical era in which it was written, recognizing that it may contain language, ideas or descriptions that are incompatible with today's ethical and moral standards.

Names from foreign languages will be preserved in their original form, with no translation.

The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade

Truth is stranger than fiction.

—Old Saying.

Having had occasion, lately, in the course of some Oriental investigations, to consult the Tellmenow Isitsöornot, a work which (like the Zohar of Simeon Jochaides) is scarcely known at all, even in Europe; and which has never been quoted, to my knowledge, by any American—if we except, perhaps, the author of the “Curiosities of American Literature”;—having had occasion, I say, to turn over some pages of the first-mentioned very remarkable work, I was not a little astonished to discover that the literary world has hitherto been strangely in error respecting the fate of the vizier’s daughter, Scheherazade, as that fate is depicted in the “Arabian Nights”; and that the dénouement there given, if not altogether inaccurate, as far as it goes, is at least to blame in not having gone very much farther.

For full information on this interesting topic, I must refer the inquisitive reader to the “Isitsöornot” itself; but in the meantime, I shall be pardoned for giving a summary of what I there discovered.

It will be remembered, that, in the usual version of the tales, a certain monarch having good cause to be jealous of his queen, not only puts her to death, but makes a vow, by his beard and the prophet, to espouse each night the most beautiful maiden in his dominions, and the next morning to deliver her up to the executioner.

Having fulfilled this vow for many years to the letter, and with a religious punctuality and method that conferred great credit upon him as a man of devout feeling and excellent sense, he was interrupted one afternoon (no doubt at his prayers) by a visit from his grand vizier, to whose daughter, it appears, there had occurred an idea.

Her name was Scheherazade, and her idea was, that she would either redeem the land from the depopulating tax upon its beauty, or perish, after the approved fashion of all heroines, in the attempt.