TALK: “A Western Vision of Oriental Women:
Antoine Galland’s Translation of the Thousand
and One Nights”
Jean-Paul Sermain
Tuesday, April 17 / 4:00 PM
UCen Harbor Room
The manuscript of the Thousand and One Nights,
as discovered by their first translator Antoine Galland
(1646-1715), depicts female characters who are subjected
to the constraints of Arab society and Islam, and who
overcome these constraints thanks to their intelligence,
energy and moral conscience. For Galland, such a representation
was incompatible both with the literary canon and the
social norms of his time. 18th century French women
had achieved a high degree of cultural refinement and
social prominence and were allowed a great degree of
freedom. Galland’s adaptation reflects this,
in effect acclimating the Oriental women of the Nights to
the French code of civility. Galland’s Western
vision of Oriental women gives us access to three key
issues of the Thousand and One Nights: the
status of women in islamic cultures, Classicism’s
translation aesthetics which advocates the appropriation
of the original, and more generally the debate over
Orientalism.
Jean-Paul SERMAIN (PhD, 1982, Doctorat d’Etat,
1992) is Professor of French Literature at the Université de
Paris 3-Sorbonne Nouvelle. An ENS alumnus, Sermain
is a specialist of 18th century French literature,
the aesthetics of Classicism and fairy tales. His books
include Rhétorique et roman au 18e siècle (1985), Marivaux,
Cervantes et le roman post critique (1999), Métafictions
(1670-1730), la réflexivité dans la littérature
d'imagination (2002) and Le Conte de fées
du classicisme aux Lumières (2005). His
recent work on the Thousand and One Nights includes
the critical edition of Antoine Galland’s pioneering
translation (2004).
Sponsored by the Department of French & Italian,
the Comparative Literature Program and the IHC
