There exist several ways of investigating the Nights in contemporary fiction. One of them is to examine a particular aspect of the collection and how it is used intertextually in modern and postmodern fiction. For instance, we can study the Arabian Nights intertexts as they come out in feminist works and …show more content…
First of all, because I find the usage of these methods to deal with the use of the Arabian Nights in The Arabian Nightmare does not comfortably fit into the aim of this study. Organizing this study around a feminist reading, or a new historicist approach is not feasible. My interests are more to do with just a historical overview of fiction that makes use of the Nights or arguing about the status of women in a patriarchal social milieu. Second, sticking to one particular author is appealing because what draws my attention in Irwin’s novel is that he uses the Nights, intertextually, in a significantly different …show more content…
One point that I will tackle in this chapter is the way in which different texts from different genres and cultures use the Arabian Night as intertexts, and for which purpose. Then, I will examine the issue of intertextuality using the theories of Genette aiming at finding a way to make intertextuality a helpful critical device that can help me identify my object of study. I will go through different works among Arab and Western literature that utilize the Nights through various eras. Then, I will outline five elements of intertextuality (transtextuality, paratextuality, metatextuality, architextuality, and hypertextuality) to underline which of them are particularly crucial for the text that I am studying.
In the second chapter, I will deal with the architextual intertextuality. In this chapter, the concern will be on how the relation between magic and realism creates the mode of magical realism. The basis of my study is the theories of the Franco-Bulgarian Essayist Tzvetan Todorov who tackles this matter in his masterpiece The Fantastic. The aim, here, is to prove that The Arabian Nightmare is a good example of a magic realist novella where magic realism does not form a small part of the book but shapes its