A discussion on the fundamental structure of Sir Richard Francis Burton’s The Arabian Nights.
The paper shows how the fundamental structure of The Arabian Nights by Sir Richard Francis Burton, consists of frame texts, or stories within stories, with The Story of King Shahrayar and Shahrazad as the outermost tale. The stories possess common didactic lessons, or morals, that connect them to one another. The paper examines how the morals are not often initially stated but rather revealed or re-emphasized from one tale to another, and they all possess a common feature that relate them back to the outermost tale?The Story of King Shahrayar and Shahrazad. The paper shows that the organizing guidelines of the fables in The Arabian Nights are the particular moral, or lesson, they each portray.
The Tale of the Fisherman and the Demon divulges into The Tale of the Enchanted King. This tale, like The Tale of the King’s Son and the She-Ghoul, displays the consequences of returning good with good. The king saves the enchanted king from spending his life as half man, half stone and gains his companionship as a result. Even more importantly, the tale connect back to the The Story of the Fisherman and the Demon because the fisherman was the cause of saving the young man and the city (66). The moral, therefore, is not only re-emphasized but connected with the previous tales.