The "Orient" within "Us": Narratives from the Muslim World in Western Oral Tradition

西方对东方的叙事遗产既不为人所知，也没有得到充分的承认，特别是就现代口头传统而言。几个世纪以来，故事一直是从东到西传播的知识产品的重要组成部分。除了大量的故事集--如Kalila wa-Dimna、Sindbad-name/Seven Sages和The Thousand and One Nights--还有许多源自穆斯林传统或由穆斯林传统改编的单一故事被传播到西方。文化接触主要发生在伊比利亚半岛、西西里、巴勒斯坦和黎凡特、拜占庭，后来又发生在北非和巴尔干与奥斯曼帝国的接触区。许多东方故事最终成为欧洲口头传统的组成部分，以至于叙述者和他们的观众都没有意识到它们的外国起源。正是这些故事，目前的研究项目建议在他们的历史和现代维度研究。从方法论上讲，该研究项目立足于比较民间叙事研究，特别强调来自波斯，阿拉伯和土耳其传统的故事。该项目将导致出版一本英文手册，其中载有对西方口述传统中记载的大约150 - 200个东方叙事的详细和全面调查。因此，由此产生的出版物将揭示东方的影响，一个方面，以前的研究东方主义和东西方之间的文化接触被忽视的地方和流行的层面。东方，特别是穆斯林，对西方口头传统中流行的大量叙事遗产有足够的认识，这是非常必要的，因为在现代世界后期，穆斯林再次被视为重要的他者，往往带有贬损和威胁的意味。

The narrative heritage the West owes to the Orient is neither commonly known nor adequately acknowledged, particularly not as far as modern oral tradition is concerned. For many centuries, tales have been an important part of the intellectual goods that travelled East to West. In addition to large collections of tales - such as Kalila wa-Dimna, the Sindbad-name/Seven Sages and The Thousand and One Nights - numerous single tales originating from or adapted by Muslim tradition were transmitted to the West. Predominantly, cultural contacts took place in the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily, Palestine and the Levant, Byzantium, and, later, in the contact zones with the Ottoman Empire in North Africa and the Balkans. Many Oriental tales eventually became integral parts of European oral tradition to an extent that the narrators and their audiences are not aware of their foreign origin. It is these tales that the present research project proposes to study in their historical and modern dimension. Methodologically, the research project is grounded in comparative folk narrative research with a particular emphasis on tales deriving from Persian, Arabic, and Turkish tradition. The project will result in the publication of an English-language handbook that contains detailed and comprehensive surveys of approximately 150-200 Oriental narratives documented in Western oral tradition. The resulting publication will thus shed light on the vernacular and popular dimension of the impact of the Orient, an aspect that previous research on Orientalism and cultural contacts between the Orient and the West has neglected. The adequate awareness for the Oriental and, particularly, the Muslim heritage of a considerable body of narratives prevalent in Western oral tradition is much needed as a humanist counterbalance in the late modern world where Muslims are again perceived as the essential Other, often with a derogatory and threatening undertone.