Arabian Nights, week 5

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Stories

Yunan and Duban

  • Duban heals king of leprosy, by medicine in a polo mallet
  • Yunan showers him with gifrs
  • Jealous vizir speaks against Duban

Sinbad and falcon

  • Falcon warns t he king of poison, but the king doesn't understand and kills the falcon.

King's son and ghoul

  • Vizir sends the king's son on a false hunt.
  • Son is found by a ghoul, but escapes by reciting a prayer
  • King kills the vizir

Yunan and Duban

  • Vizir persuades Yunan to kill Duban
  • Duban laments his fate
  • Repetiiton of "spare me and god will spare you, but kill me and you will be killed", relating to Fisherman's statement.
  • "I am in no condition to tell you a story" Ha!
  • Duban asks for, and gets, leave to settle his affairs
  • Presents Yunan with a book laced with poison
  • Both die

Fisherman and jinni

  • Fisherman says moral of the tales.
  • Jinni promises to aid the fisherman, shows him magical lake
  • Fisherman takes fish to the sultan.

Fisherman and jinni, part 2

  • Girl magically appears, talks to frying fish
  • Repeats for vizir
  • When the king watches, a giant appears
  • The king explores, finds the black palace
  • Comes across beautiful boy, sad, with lower body of black stone

Notes

"And I will kill you in the morning": Connection to Princess Bride?

Yunan and Duban

  • How is this tale about a trapped jinni persuading a fisherman to release him? (Refer to the outer story)

Sinbad and falcon

  • Alternate tale in the marginal notes: back to questions of sources of the tales.
  • Comparison to "Boy who cried wolf"?
  • King Sinbad is meant to represent the jealous vizir? Isn't that the wrong way around, in terms of status?

King's son and ghoul

  • Comments on the note that "the story of a duplicitous vizir is an odd choice"
  • Does this story advance the vizir's case?

Yunan and Duban

  • Did you anticipate the ending?
  • Do these stories reinforce the theme of unjust actions bringing ruin to the actor? How does this relate to fisherman and jinni?

Fisherman and jinni

  • Do the subtales reinforce the statement the fisherman is making?
  • What about the jinni's warning to only fish the lake once per day?
  • Do you get a sense of wonder about the lake, the fish, the palace?
  • The rich description of the second half of this tale is a change of style from prevous stories. Any thoughts on this?
  • Lots of nested stories, including some not told. Are you following the structure?

Comments

  • 0

    I have to confess that I am slightly getting lost in how many levels deep in the structure we are at any point! But that isn't affecting my enjoyment of the stories as we go along - there's more of a sense of surprised recognition along the lines of "aha I'd forgotten we'd left that unresolved". I've been trying to decide if the next level "down" in the stack is intended to address purely the one "above" it, or if it obliquely is referencing the plot in the "highest" (outermost) level, and whether this should or should not include Shahrazad's own level!

    I have a feeling that sometimes - as you might expect from a story collection that has been repeated, embellished and augmented many times - the specific location in the stack is not necessarily structurally related to all the items above/outside it, but just happened to fit thematically in some storyteller's mind.

    The occasional forewarnings of dire consequences (not always revealed or enacted at once are fun - for example we are still waiting for the deployment of the "don't fish more than once a day" warning. Is the consequence going to be that the fish simply stop coming, or is it going to be worse than that? This I feel is a standard plot ploy in our European fairytale traditions as well - "she'll prick her finger on her birthday", or "you mustn't ever try to see me in the light". Maybe it's a global thing, and people everywhere get these warnings and yet nevertheless do the thing anyway. I guess you could easily include the Adam and Eve story - "you can eat of any tree except that specific one", and of course that's in the Middle Eastern tradition (there are also biblical examples of nested stories, though none so elaborate as the ones we are reading here).

    Do we think that King Sinbad is the same as the person in the Sinbad the Sailor story (which I think we will come to considerably later) or is it just a conventional name - in a similar way to lots of stories accreting around Robin Hood or King Arthur?

    It was fun to find out where Umberto Eco got his inspiration for the poisoned manuscript! That particular connection was new to me.

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    @NeilNjae said:

    • How is this tale about a trapped jinni persuading a fisherman to release him? (Refer to the outer story)

    I assume it's about reaping a reward (or at least avoiding a punishment) in exchange for a kind deed. The motif 'Spare me and God will spare you.' is repeated many times. This is a call for mercy.

    • King Sinbad is meant to represent the jealous vizir? Isn't that the wrong way around, in terms of status?

    King Sinbad is meant to represent the man who was too quick to anger, and later regretted it. Really, than can represent anyone who is trying to allay someone's anger - in turns. both the fisherman and the jinni. And Yunan.

    • Does this story advance the vizir's case?

    Yes, this was an odd one. But here, Yunan is saying to the vizier, don't be duplicitous, lest (like this other vizier) you come to a sticky end.

    • Did you anticipate the ending?

    Not this specific ending, but the thing I remember most about my first read of these tales was how often the main characters got some sort of comeuppance, and in that regard I was not disappointed.

    • Do these stories reinforce the theme of unjust actions bringing ruin to the actor? How does this relate to fisherman and jinni?

    The story of Yunan, yes. The story of the ghoul, yes. The story of Sinbad and the falcon, yes (though 'ruin would be a strong word - guilt, more like). The Jinni thinks (or at least accuses) the fisherman of being unjust, and the fisherman accuses the Jinni with being unjust (and frankly has a better case than the jinni does, IMO).

    Also, going up one more level, Shahrazad needs to convey the message that her king is being unjust, in a more subtle fashion.

    • Do you get a sense of wonder about the lake, the fish, the palace?

    Yes, and actually this part reminds me very much of Tanith Lee's Flat Earth stories.

    • Lots of nested stories, including some not told. Are you following the structure?

    Like Richard, it was a bit disorienting to pick this up after nearly a week's break. Since we're still not finished the tale of the Fisherman and the Jinni, I plan to read the rest now while it's still fresh. The rest of this week's reading is the beginning of a new tale.

    A few notes on this: Yes, the inspiration for Name of the Rose was cool - I didn't know that, either.
    The note that concludes "The book that tells no story kills' might be a bit of a stretch.

    More ancient cultural influences

    • the giving of a garment to an illustrious visitor to court goes waaay back in time. Also, people bringing important news from abroad to court could expect some kind of gift. This includes 'news' delivered by ecstatic prophecy.
    • The breaking of a vow is a serious offence. In Babylonian times, it could lead to illness. There was even a kind of food eaten during an oath-swearing ceremony, and if the oath was broken, it was said the food would turn against the eater.

    Lastly, re: the story of the lost tribe of Ad. Cool story, sis.

  • 2

    I have a few things to contribute, but will do so over a few posts.

    Have read enough now to say that the stories in this part of the book are developments of jātaka, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jataka_tales) a genre of Buddhist literature that dates back to about the 5th century BCE, where the Buddha is often a ruler of some kind. The framed stories are often considered older, e.g. to the time of Aesop.

    Many jātakas are told with a common threefold plot schema which contains:

    • a “narrative in the present” (paccupannavatthu), with the Buddha and other figures,
    • a “narrative in the past” (atītavatthu), a story from a past life of the Buddha
    • a "link" (samodhāna) in which there is an “identification of the past protagonists with the present ones.”

    The link is often presented as weakly causal in nature, and serves an explanatory purpose i.e. answering the question "Why did such-and-such occur?" I find it interesting that so little attention is paid to the truth that statistical and scientific methods most often do not provide satisfactory answers explaining why particular events occurred (e.g. why did this person survive the crash? why did this person get sick?), yet otherwise intelligent people think they will persuade others to adopt views of the world, particularly the human world.

    Anyway, in the jātaka there is quite a lot going on, e.g.

    • The mingling of Buddha with King as a ground that articulates and to critiques what we call politics and kingship / ruler / governor;
    • The appropriation of vernacular tales into contexts for new purposes; and
    • The production self-and other-awareness through a personal lineage / genealogy that is neither based on blood nor violence, but on narrative that everyone knows is not factual (not quite the same as not true).

    The last is what most interests me. The genre develops into several related genres, with more complexity of structure, but always contains elements of what we can call a "causality of morality," much like these stories. Translations of the Buddhist materials exist from 2nd-3rd century CE on, and there is little reason to not presume that the arrangements date from some time earlier.

    As time went by the explicit explanation of who is who, and the obvious moral conclusion, were no longer so important as to always written right into the texts, and the complexity of the nesting relations increased beyond what we've seen here so far, reaching 6 or 7 layers deep, each layer being interrupted by others. The complexity makes it quite difficult to read and understand, which is part of the point I suppose - altered states are produced.

  • 2

    So like @RichardAbbott and @Apocryphal I find it a bit difficult to keep track of where we are in the stories, so I'm reading to what seems to me be a logical place to stop. Will try not to post any spoilers.

    Thinking about the structure of the tales, what strikes me most so far is that we are essentially reading a form of argumentation about what people should do when faced with moral dilemmas. Moral dilemmas are by nature questions that cannot be resolved by appeal to facts or certainties (see earlier post). The reasoning used is a form of analogy that the story-telling induces in the reader, who is put in the position of asking themselves "How am I the same and different from the people in this story, and how would their decisions work out in a similar but not identical situation?" The way the stories are framed and nested teaches the reader to do this by showing the people in the stories applying this method of narrative as an aid to understanding. So in this sense I think the stories are educational, intent on producing people who can apply analogy self-reflectively to themselves in their own situations because of understanding others in their own situations, and then use that method to produce an argument.

    I would argue that the novel is still within this analogical way of thinking through the relation of action and moral dilemma, whereas contemporary scientific and fact-based narratives (e.g. history) are not so able to fulfill this function. It seems to me that adage that not knowing history means one repeats it is specifically about this human capacity to understand the insights gleaned from these analogical relations between different situations, and not about grasping the historical truths or facts of a situation.

  • 1

    @Apocryphal said:

    Like Richard, it was a bit disorienting to pick this up after nearly a week's break. Since we're still not finished the tale of the Fisherman and the Jinni, I plan to read the rest now while it's still fresh. The rest of this week's reading is the beginning of a new tale.

    Do we want to rejig the reading schedule so we do one top-level story per week? That may be quite a lot of reading. If we extend the time between discussions, might we lose momentum?

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    edited October 2023
    For my part, I’m flexible. One the one hand, it might flow better. On the other, reading it like we are is a bit more like Shahriyar’s experience. I never looked, but how long would the section be if we included one top- level story per week. Maybe we divide the top level stories into two (so we always either begin or end a top level story each week)?
  • 0
    edited October 2023

    @BarnerCobblewood said:
    The link (samodhāna) is often presented as weakly causal in nature, and serves an explanatory purpose i.e. answering the question "Why did such-and-such occur?" I find it interesting that so little attention is paid to the truth that statistical and scientific methods most often do not provide satisfactory answers explaining why particular events occurred (e.g. why did this person survive the crash? why did this person get sick?), yet otherwise intelligent people think they will persuade others to adopt views of the world, particularly the human world.

    I think there is a global fascination with these why questions - as well as "how did the leopard get his spots" type fables, there are all kinds of "why are there 7 stars in the Pleaides (with 6 brighter than the seventh)" tales. My own feeling is that the unsatisfactory answers to which you refer from statistical and scientific methods has led people collectively to seek other approaches, typically built on principles of symmetry or perceived resonance. A narrative approach seeking to establish causality [not casualty :)] by shared storytelling principles doesn't seem far-fetched to me!

  • 1

    @NeilNjae said:
    Do we want to rejig the reading schedule so we do one top-level story per week? That may be quite a lot of reading. If we extend the time between discussions, might we lose momentum?

    I'm reading at my own pace, then making my comments according to the schedule. So however it works best for other people. I agree though that if we're interested in the meta-structure among the stories the discussion needs to be clumped in a way that leads to longer reads. I like the shorter material for each discussion.

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    Really interesting stuff re: possible Buddhist roots, btw.

  • 0

    @Apocryphal said:
    Really interesting stuff re: possible Buddhist roots, btw.

    Yes, totally agree

  • 0

    Re reading pace, I had a radical thought (which I haven't actually enacted) about reading in one evening only one portion according to how Shahrazad rationed the king! Of course that would mean some evenings reading hardly anything (and I don't know that I'd cover the weekly page count that way) but I suppose it would give more of the impression that the original storyteller imagined would be most effective. Would I feel like the king that I wanted the next portion so much that I'd put my agenda on hold? We're slightly spoiled in a reading culture (as opposed to oral) by the ability of us as readers to decide when to start and stop, rather than being at the beck and call of the storyteller.

  • 2

    @BarnerCobblewood said:
    I have a few things to contribute, but will do so over a few posts.

    Have read enough now to say that the stories in this part of the book are developments of jātaka, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jataka_tales) a genre of Buddhist literature that dates back to about the 5th century BCE, where the Buddha is often a ruler of some kind. The framed stories are often considered older, e.g. to the time of Aesop.

    Can I unpack this a bit? Are you saying:

    • these stories are deliberately constructed in the jātaka tradition, or
    • these tales have adopted similar forms as they have a similar purpose (convergent evolution), or
    • interpretation of jātaka provides a useful lens through which to view these stories?

    The link is often presented as weakly causal in nature, and serves an explanatory purpose i.e. answering the question "Why did such-and-such occur?" I find it interesting that so little attention is paid to the truth that statistical and scientific methods most often do not provide satisfactory answers explaining why particular events occurred (e.g. why did this person survive the crash? why did this person get sick?), yet otherwise intelligent people think they will persuade others to adopt views of the world, particularly the human world.

    This is when the scientific methods talk about risk and things that affect the likelihood of an event. But that's probably a distraction from your point.

    Anyway, I agree that it's not easy to educate someone to change their beliefs, attitudes, or morals. You can't just tell them, you have to get them to update their moral compass, and that's a purely internal process.

  • 1
    edited October 2023

    @NeilNjae said:

    @BarnerCobblewood said:
    I have a few things to contribute, but will do so over a few posts.

    Have read enough now to say that the stories in this part of the book are developments of jātaka, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jataka_tales) a genre of Buddhist literature that dates back to about the 5th century BCE, where the Buddha is often a ruler of some kind. The framed stories are often considered older, e.g. to the time of Aesop.

    Can I unpack this a bit? Are you saying:

    • these stories are deliberately constructed in the jātaka tradition, or
    • these tales have adopted similar forms as they have a similar purpose (convergent evolution), or
    • interpretation of jātaka provides a useful lens through which to view these stories?
    1. Of course not. I don't think we have any evidence that would show the composers of these works were consciously aware of jātaka. It's not impossible, but I think it is highly unlikely that we can establish any direct link.
    2. I do not think these stories developed independently of the general "Old World" culture around them. I think that arguments for convergent cultural evolution must posit isolation of the cultures involved, which is certainly not the case here.
    3. Not sure what you mean here. I'm suggesting that by understanding the origins and development of how this "nested story" structure had been used in the general cultural sphere near the composers (the inhabitants of the land-bridge from Asia called Arabs in the Introduction), we might get some understanding of how and why they used it.

    I quite strongly advocate the ideas 1) That cultural diffusion is far more vast and influential than usually recognised, and 2) That it always flows two ways. For example, the Buddhists were most likely re-using an existing South-Asian story-telling tradition, while adapting it for their own purposes. I say this because there are examples of so-called Jain and Hindu jātaka. For example Buddhists in the area of present-day Afghanistan were definitely influenced by Greek culture via contact with Alexander the Great et al., and vice versa, and this interaction has resonated within Buddhism globally. It is a false conceit that at any time there is a human culture that is older or more developed than another. What they have is different histories.

    Also what many people take as conquest and domination often also consists of trade. Today in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/oct/26/cold-war-satellite-images-hundreds-unknown-roman-forts

    Until now, historians assumed these forts were part of a defensive line built to protect the eastern province of the empire from Arab and Persian incursions, and from nomadic marauding tribes intent on captive-taking and slave-raiding.

    The new discoveries instead point to the frontier being more fluid and a vibrant place of cross-border trade, rather than of constant violent conflict, the authors said, with the forts supporting a system of caravan-based interregional trade, communication and military transport.

    The authors said it now raises the question: “Was it a wall or a road?”

    “Since the 1930s, historians and archeologists have debated the strategic or political purpose of this system of fortifications,” said the lead author of the research, Prof Jesse Casana, of Dartmouth college in New Hampshire, US. “But few scholars have questioned Poidebard’s basic observation that there was a line of forts defining the eastern Roman frontier.”

    The 396 new sites, hidden by modern-day development, are widely distributed across the region from east to west, which does not support the argument that the forts constituted a north-south border wall.

    Researchers now hypothesise that the forts were constructed to support cross-border trade, protecting caravans travelling between the eastern provinces and the non-Roman territories, as well as facilitating communications between east and west.

    Significantly, this indicates that the borders of the Roman world were less rigidly defined and exclusionist than previously believed, said the authors.

    Despite Horta's approach to establishing cultural ownership in the Introduction, cultures are not peoples, and also not independent of peoples. There are no people without a culture, although people thinking there are is an aspect of culture. In recent times here in North America we have seen just how pernicious and terrible this idea is, but its cultural roots extend much further back beyond the so-called Doctrine of Discovery, and can be found in incipient forms all over the world.

    The link is often presented as weakly causal in nature, and serves an explanatory purpose i.e. answering the question "Why did such-and-such occur?" I find it interesting that so little attention is paid to the truth that statistical and scientific methods most often do not provide satisfactory answers explaining why particular events occurred (e.g. why did this person survive the crash? why did this person get sick?), yet otherwise intelligent people think they will persuade others to adopt views of the world, particularly the human world.

    This is when the scientific methods talk about risk and things that affect the likelihood of an event. But that's probably a distraction from your point.

    Not at all. My point is that weak causality does not posit certainty of outcome, but also denies complete randomness, positing regularities rather than certainties, whereas statistical and scientific methods continue to aim at definitive certainty as being an aspect of the world as it is, e.g. Einstein's "God does not play dice ..." statement continues to be how statistics are commonly understood. It seems to me that many of the verses in the stories we have read so far express a ubiquitous human distress that despite our efforts we cannot establish certainty in the world, and likewise continue to hope that it could be otherwise. I would argue that this distress-hope polarity is one of the building blocks from which culture is made, and we can presume it is ubiquitously operating in human activity, and likely will remain so as long as the jury remains out on whether these two can be uncoupled. I think most cultures (not talking about any individual people) acknowledge that at the present time they cannot, but cultures which endure do not find this a reason for despair to efface hope.

    Anyway, I agree that it's not easy to educate someone to change their beliefs, attitudes, or morals. You can't just tell them, you have to get them to update their moral compass, and that's a purely internal process.

    So true.

  • 0

    @RichardAbbott said:
    Re reading pace, I had a radical thought (which I haven't actually enacted) about reading in one evening only one portion according to how Shahrazad rationed the king! Of course that would mean some evenings reading hardly anything (and I don't know that I'd cover the weekly page count that way) but I suppose it would give more of the impression that the original storyteller imagined would be most effective. Would I feel like the king that I wanted the next portion so much that I'd put my agenda on hold? We're slightly spoiled in a reading culture (as opposed to oral) by the ability of us as readers to decide when to start and stop, rather than being at the beck and call of the storyteller.

    And just developing this slightly (I thought about it a bit more while out doing grandparental duty during the school half term here)...
    The portion we read last week includes ten (I think) end-of-storytime-exchanges between Shahrazad and her sister. Some are several pages long, others just a few paragraphs, so there's an enormous range of storytelling time involved. In some cases, were I the listener I would be saying "I've not yet had my money's worth".

    Also, whilst most of them end at what you might call a logical division point (eg in Duban and the king there is a break when both have died and before the moral of the tale is expounded by the fisherman), a few don't (eg in the second time the girl appears through the wall while the fish are being cooked, there's a break midway through the sequence of actions and not at the end). I haven't yet worked out any cool scheme by which division points are chosen, either by Shahrazad (presuming the frame story to be real) or by the storyteller of the moment (whoever that might be). Maybe that's the point - part of the fiction of keeping Shahrazad alive is that the listener (the king or us) doesn't even know how much fictional development is on the ration card tonight?

    But supposing these division points to be real, and intentional, and not just the result of centuries of slightly random accretion, what does this tell us about the audience? (again, king, historic listeners, or us readers). Well, all those various audience members have to keep in mind a whole stack of context at the division points - for example the immediate characters and situation in the story-level being expounded, plus all the numerous other characters and situations in the higher levels of the stack which will at some point be unwound. It's not a trivial problem, since as we have already noted, similar characters (eg a vizier) appear at multiple levels, sometimes with opposite positions on the moral compass.

    I haven't yet come to any sort of conclusion to all these thoughts, but it seems to me that at very least it presupposes a high level of story-listening sophistication to the audience, especially in an oral rather than written context. And a high level of commitment to the stories! Imagine if you missed a couple of nights and then start hearing about a vizier - is this the wicked vizier who is plotting downfall, or the nice vizier who wants justice? Or has the stack I was in been fully popped, and it's a different vizier altogether?

  • 1
    Perhaps all the breaks are just where the storyteller needed a sip of tea. Which means the shorter sections were the thirstier nights, for whatever reason.
  • 0
    > @Apocryphal said:
    > Perhaps all the breaks are just where the storyteller needed a sip of tea. Which means the shorter sections were the thirstier nights, for whatever reason.

    I could go with the cups of tea explanation 😁
  • 1
    edited October 2023
    One authors whose books I almost always see in used bookshops is Jack Chalker. I’ve never read Chalker, but I’ve been thinking of exploring his first book, Midnight at the Well of Souls, which is free on Audible.

    Looking him up, I saw this on Wikipedia:

    “Many of Chalker's works involve some physical transformation of the main characters. For instance, in the Well World novels, immigrants to the Well World are transformed from their original form to become a member of one of the 1,560 sentient species that inhabit that artificial planet. Another example would be that the *Wonderland Gambit series resembles traditional Buddhist jataka-type reincarnation stories set in a science fiction environment.*”
  • 1

    @RichardAbbott said:
    Also, whilst most of them end at what you might call a logical division point (eg in Duban and the king there is a break when both have died and before the moral of the tale is expounded by the fisherman), a few don't (eg in the second time the girl appears through the wall while the fish are being cooked, there's a break midway through the sequence of actions and not at the end). I haven't yet worked out any cool scheme by which division points are chosen, either by Shahrazad (presuming the frame story to be real) or by the storyteller of the moment (whoever that might be). Maybe that's the point - part of the fiction of keeping Shahrazad alive is that the listener (the king or us) doesn't even know how much fictional development is on the ration card tonight?

    I'm feeling sleepy ... I've been wondering if they might always occur at the end / beginning of pages, regardless of the meaning of the words printed. That might explain it.

    But supposing these division points to be real, and intentional, and not just the result of centuries of slightly random accretion, what does this tell us about the audience? (again, king, historic listeners, or us readers). Well, all those various audience members have to keep in mind a whole stack of context at the division points - for example the immediate characters and situation in the story-level being expounded, plus all the numerous other characters and situations in the higher levels of the stack which will at some point be unwound. It's not a trivial problem, since as we have already noted, similar characters (eg a vizier) appear at multiple levels, sometimes with opposite positions on the moral compass.

    I haven't yet come to any sort of conclusion to all these thoughts, but it seems to me that at very least it presupposes a high level of story-listening sophistication to the audience, especially in an oral rather than written context. And a high level of commitment to the stories! Imagine if you missed a couple of nights and then start hearing about a vizier - is this the wicked vizier who is plotting downfall, or the nice vizier who wants justice? Or has the stack I was in been fully popped, and it's a different vizier altogether?

    To me it speaks to the fact that this genre is a hybrid as much literary as oral - the stories are oral, but the nesting is literary - i.e. learned from writing rather than from story-telling.

    Another possibility is that it is a tradition like the oral recitation of the Vedas etc. in cultures influenced by South Asia, where there is an institution charged with ensuring that the texts and structures are memorised correctly. This continues to the present-day: Tibetan monasteries still have public examinations where individuals are required to demonstrate before experts and the public that they have correctly memorised written texts organised into "outlines." There is even a genre of "outline" text that is expected to be memorised.

    With modernity these institutions have for the most part faded away, although I suppose they could be recovered at any time.

    Regarding performance of the stories, I think the possibility that the performance is aimed to satisfy and delight multiple audiences is also worth considering. By nesting the stories you create a performance that is of interest to an educated audience who can appreciate the "structure," while the "content" satisfies those members who have not yet completed their education. This would enable narrative performance to cultivate diversity of expertise into community, rather than education functioning to differentiate individuals within a community.

  • 0

    @BarnerCobblewood said:
    Regarding performance of the stories, I think the possibility that the performance is aimed to satisfy and delight multiple audiences is also worth considering. By nesting the stories you create a performance that is of interest to an educated audience who can appreciate the "structure," while the "content" satisfies those members who have not yet completed their education. This would enable narrative performance to cultivate diversity of expertise into community, rather than education functioning to differentiate individuals within a community.

    I like this idea, which I take to mean that storytelling is intended to perform some kind of cohesive effect on society as a whole

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