Content
Each story is preceded by a short introduction by the author, giving a brief history of the tale's literary mutations, or remarking on the strange similarities that versions exhibit across great geographical or historical distances. The collection has had a broad appeal and has become a widely used sourcebook of tales. Whilst Shah mentions many of the ancient and modern interpretations that have been placed on the tales, along with some of the theories of cross-cultural transmission, he himself interprets them little, writing in the introduction:
| “ | Working for thirty-five years among the written and oral sources of our world heritage in tales, one feels a truly living element in them which is startlingly evident when one isolates the 'basic' stories: the ones which tend to have travelled furthest, to have featured in the largest number of classical collections, to have inspired great writers of the past and present. | ” |
The value that Shah put on folklore of this kind is clear, not only from the many volumes of tales that he published but also from books published by his children. The title alone of one of his daughter Saira Shah's books, The Storyteller's Daughter, gives some indication, while his son Tahir Shah's book In Arabian Nights, itself an exploration of the power of the folktale, recalls:
| “ | When my father died a decade ago, I inherited his library. There were five reinforced boxes of books labeled "STORIES: VALUABLE, HANDLE WITH CARE". Among them were Aesop's Fables, Hans Christian Anderson, and the Brothers Grimm. There were many others too, the Arab collections and volumes of tales from every corner of the world... | ” |
Read more about this topic: World Tales
Famous quotes containing the word content:
“For believe me!—the secret to harvesting the greatest abundance and the greatest enjoyment from existence is this—living dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors, so long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you knowing ones! The time will soon be past when you could be content to live hidden in the forests like timid deer.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Yet the New Testament treats of man and man’s so-called spiritual affairs too exclusively, and is too constantly moral and personal, to alone content me, who am not interested solely in man’s religious or moral nature, or in man even.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and vulgar way of coition.”
—Thomas Browne (1605–1682)