One Thousand and One Nights and other venerable collections of stories

[MorkTheFiddle]

Has anyone read all or at least a substantial portion of A Thousand and One Nights or Boccaccio's Decameron, either in the original language or in translation? A search for the former in HTLAL brought up nothing of relevance. I suppose one could include Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and the string of stories scattered through Don Quixote. The roots of some of these European stories may go back into Latin. There is a text of stories that has some likely suspects in this regard: Wright's Latin Stories. If anyone has read any, I mean 1001 Nights and Boccaccio, but not The Canterbury Tales or Don Quixote, both of which I have read, do you think they were worth the effort? And feel free to throw in what you think of long collections of stories from other languages, too.

[Cavesa]

I've read two from your short list. 1001 nights and Decameron. Both in Czech translation for my literature classes at highschool, ok, only two or three stories from the 1001 nights were required but I liked it. Decameron was one of the choices including as well Chauser and some others.

Decameron: Definitely worth it! Awesome, funny, often clever (ok, sometimes not that much), and very pleasant as it makes fun of stupid and annoying people. Perhaps partially thanks to the translation, it felt quite modern.

1001 Nights: I think I read it all. Several volumes. Many were great. But it gets often repetitive as the author obviously didn't have 1001 unique ideas for a story. It felt less modern, which is not bad. It was an enchantening read, even though I prefer stories with an ending The stories that are most often reproduced in other works (books, movies,...) are the best from the collection. So is it worth it? For enthusiasts (or stubborn readers) yes, in general not that much.

[jeff_lindqvist]

Have you seen Professor Arguelles' list of Great books? If nothing else, it's a list of suggested reading material when you need inspiration.

Boccacio, Chaucer and Cervantes are there, among many many others. I'd be surprised if the 1001 Nights weren't included in the Canon for Central (Middle Eastern) Civilization, but that list isn't published.

Speaking of lists, Luke posted his goals here and linked to a Ten Year Reading Plan.

[Heros]

I love the folktales by Grimm brothers and Andersen. Oh yes, I really like Bocaccio's Decameron book. I have a Spanish translation of those books. Their tales are very funny and interesting.

I recommend you to read "El lazarillo de Tormes if you're interested in classical Spanish Literature.

I'm sorry for my broken English. I still learn this language and I don't confident about writing english yet.

[eginhard]

I'd be surprised if the 1001 Nights weren't included in the Canon for Central (Middle Eastern) Civilization, but that list isn't published.

It's in there indeed! The links still work in an older version from archive.org

[Ogrim]

I read the whole Don Quijote when I was a student, and also large parts of Boccaccio's Decameron. Both are great works of literature, although for me the "entertainment value" of the Decameron was greater than the Quijote.

A work to include in such a list of classics is La Fontaine's Fables, also written in the 17th century like the Quijote. All in all there are 243 fables, written in verse. Many of them are "translations" of fables and stories by Aesop, Phaedrus and Horace, but La Fontaine also drew on medieval sources. You can find the book both in French original and English translation for free on project Gutenberg and also as a free e-book on Amazon.

[iguanamon]

Folktales are an essential part of my learning in every language. Perhaps because I come from a culture with a storytelling tradition, I find them to be a window and a portal to a culture. I read the 1001 Nights years ago, while in university. I read the Richard Burton "unexpurgated" version in English and thoroughly enjoyed them. I can't vouch for other translations in other languages.

The language in folktales is down to earth- common and uncomplicated because these stories were told to everyone of all ages and education levels. They transmit the deep culture of a people, who they are as a people and how they see the world around them. I, personally, think that more learners should try to seek out the folktales of whatever TL they are learning (as long as the language is fairly modern) as, to me it allows for a deeper understanding of the culture(s) of the people who speak the languages I am learning. Hence the name of my log- The iguana's tale. The language informs the culture and the culture informs the language.

[MorkTheFiddle]

Have you seen Professor Arguelles' list of Great books? If nothing else, it's a list of suggested reading material when you need inspiration.

Boccacio, Chaucer and Cervantes are there, among many many others. I'd be surprised if the 1001 Nights weren't included in the Canon for Central (Middle Eastern) Civilization, but that list isn't published.

Speaking of lists, Luke posted his goals here and linked to a Ten Year Reading Plan.

This is all Serpent's fault. I joined her Short Story Challenge (SSC), pledged myself to reading stories by one French (Anna Gavalda) and one Spanish (Julio Cortázar) author and then almost immediately cheated on them both. Having once gotten a bellyful of short stories written in English (excepting Alice Munro, a writer of the first rank, IMHO), this SSC got me curious about writers of short stories in French and English, and then, as I got thinking about it, of stories in other languages, too. I know a bit about Old Norse thattir, and I know about the famous collections of Decameron et al., but I know little or nothing about the key quality, are they interesting to read. So I started this quest to find writers of short stories.

I should make it clear that I have not taken a vow of satiety, as I would not dream of trying to read all the good short stories of every language and culture in the world.

[Longinus]

I second the Decameron and the Grimm collections.

Since you read Spanish, you must read some of Jorge Luis Borges' stories, if you haven't already. If I ever learn to read Spanish, it will be solely in order to read Borges in the original. I would suggest Labyrinths to start.

Not sure if you're interested in anything in English, but there's Dubliners, of course.

If you want to try your hand at Italian, there's Italo Calvino.

[Keys]

Hi, for collections of short stories that I have read in various languages and which are available for free on Gutenberg, here's a handy list:
For French I read Maupassant's, Balzac's and Zola's short stories. There's a number of collections containing stories of those three authors in French.
In German I read short stories by Kafka (Kleine Erzählungen) and Theodor Storm. There's also some by the Red Baron (Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen), a sort of diary until he was shot down.
In Greek good short stories are from Alexandros Papadiamantis, to be found on Gutenberg.
In Hungarian I read short stories by Zsigmund Mórics, Frigyes Karinthy and Ambrus Zoltán. Especially the first one is pretty famous.
For Italian I liked Verga's stories (Giovanni Verga). They're mostly about the plight of the average Sicilian or Italian. I have two big volumes containing all of his short stories. The Italian is a bit difficult as it's old. I'd call that a venerable collection of short stories but that might be personal.
In Polish there's Henri Sienkewicz of course, and some other free short story collections on Gutenberg.
In Portuguese there's a bunch of folk stories and tales that I read from Alexandre Herculano and Pedroso Consigliere. And there's Contos d'Aldeia by Alberto Braga, for short stories I liked those of Humberto de Campos. Most are in old spelling.
In Spanish as available on Gutenberg I read the short stories from Alarcón. For Spanish I'm not sure if there's a classic collection. I mostly read recent Spanish literature.
In Swedish (if you're looking for classic/old short stories collections) there's Hasse Zetterström's and Sigge Strömberg's collections of short stories. Those by Selma Lagerlöf I'd say are classics.
In Russian there's of course, Checkov and Gogol, and if larger stories are allowed Tolstoj and Dostojevski. Turgenev has got a good number of palatable short stories as well.