Le mille e una notte e il canone letterario arabo tra passato e presente: reazioni alla censura egiziana del 1985

The Thousand and One Nights, which oldest manuscript dates back to the 15th century, is a distinguished collection of Arabic tales that brings together stories from different literary traditions, mainly Indian and Persian. The present study focuses on a prominent question relating to this masterpiece of world literature, namely its difficult positioning that straddles popular and high narrative within the canon of modern Arabic literature. In order to explore this broad subject, which can be approached from different angles, this article offers three reflections by Arab intellectuals, which were published in 1985 following the legal ban of 3000 uncensored copies of the collection in Egypt. While expressing their opinions on this event, the Arab critics also discuss the ambiguous role that the Thousand and One Nights holds within its own literary tradition. Consisting of medieval tales belonging to the genre of "middle narrative" (Chraibi 2016), the collection owes its modern-day notability to the various translations into European languages, which subsequently led to a renewed appreciation of this work throughout the Arab world. The convoluted textual history of the collection, the questions concerning decency it provokes, and its relationship with the West makes its positioning in the modern Arabic canon a challenging task.