French Fun

About the Work

This "French Fun" is based on Sir Richard Burton's version of Arabian Nights Entertainment, a sixteen-volumed set from the late 1880s. The action is placed in Europe, centred on France and the court of king Louis XI at Versailles.

What are now Swiss, were once Persians, Cairo has become Florence, and the Infidels are the English, to name a few sweeping changes. And the result? Judge for yourself.

The Work Has Been Vastly Popular

French Fun is derived from a literary masterpiece of Arabic culture, the Arabian Nights. The original contains a wealth of poems and deeply tragic stories. They are all put into a framework tale from old Persia about a woman who married a king and told him tale after tale to save her life. Many of the stories existend in some form or other in Arabic before or around AD 800. A hundred years later or so the brilliant Abu Abd-Allah Muhammed el-Gahsjgari formed the Arabian Nights. Since then the work has been vastly popular, first in the Orient, and since the beginning of the 1600s in France, Europe, and America. There have been changes and additions to it. The most important one was done by the French orientalist Galland who inserted ten new stories. Among them were "Aladdin and the lamp" and "Ali Baba and the Forty Robbers".

The established composition of the Arabian Nights consists of tales within tales within tales in a certain order - and all are contained inside the first tale. Those who have studied such ways of composing fairy tale collections, say it is typically Indian - it a was very popular way of composing fairy tale collections in ancient India.

"Easily recognisable"

Like Waldemar Brøgger we present the stories not all intertwined. It helps those who would like to read one story and know the end of it at once, and free them from reading half a dozen of tales to get there, for example.

This version has placed the action in the 15-1600s in France. If children and youngsters are to benefit from fairy tales, they need to know about where the main action is, the animals should be quite easily recognisable ones.

• The names of people changed and might be stylized.
• Where the action first took place, mattered litte, it took place "long ago";
• Names of people is often missing;
• The places don't get much specified, as a general rule.

In addition to those standards there are some more: Fairy tales today need to combat alienation and benefit little ones in urban settings. It calls for crossings and simplifications.

We consider French Fun a largely experimental tale collection along many of these old, established lines.

About the framework tale

The famous tale of Sjeherasad and her murderous husband existed in a Persian book already about AD 750. There is little doubt that Arabs had translated that book already in the 800s, says Waldemar Brøgger in the first volume of his translation [1.19].

Literature  
     


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