Charming Orient Shining England

Book excerpt: The Arabian Nights is a composite work consisting of popular stories originally transmitted orally and developed during several centuries, with material added somewhat haphazardly at different periods and places. This study was devoted to the impact of The Arabian Nights on four novelists of the nineteenth century: Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, George Meredith, and Robert Louis Stevenson. These authors were selected on the ground of their life spans, which encompassed almost the whole century. Because they are among the masters of the English novel, it is reasonable to assume that they did not content themselves with mere imitations resulting in pseudo-oriental tales. Their original creations assimilated the influences from The Arabian Nights, forming new unified structures with interwoven references and allusions, which are to be redetected.