『천일야화』의 세계문학적 위상과 현대아랍문학에 끼친 영향

A Study on The Thousand and One Nights' Status as World Prominent Literature and Its Influence on Modern Arabic Literature

The aim of this article is to reconsider The Thousand and One Nights' status as one of the world prominent literatures in the literary history and its influence on modern Arabic literature. For this, the study employes methodology of comparative literature approaching The Thousand and One Nights stories from three different angles and it includes perspectives of modern literary criticism, modern Europe literature, and modern arab literature. It also limits time period of the study as modern. The Thousand and One Nights has made remarkable influence on expansion of subjects of modern literary criticism, especially that of French comparative literary criticism which focuses on influence and receptive relations in literature. It also affects European literary history as well as its literary genre and subjects. As for The Thousand and One Nights' influence on modern Arabic literature, it has inspired various writers, especially in the field of drama. As a result, many writers introduced the stories into their works and it became one of recurrent subjects in Arabic literary works. One of the representative writers who introduced The Thousand and One Nights into their work is Egyptian playwriter Tawfiq al-Hakim.