{"id":1954,"date":"2011-04-22T21:34:51","date_gmt":"2011-04-22T21:34:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dianeduane.com\/outofambit\/?p=1954"},"modified":"2011-04-22T21:34:51","modified_gmt":"2011-04-22T21:34:51","slug":"what-no-burton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dianeduane.com\/outofambit\/2011\/04\/22\/what-no-burton\/","title":{"rendered":"What, no Burton?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"float:right;margin:0px 0px 10px 10px;padding:8px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dianeduane.com\/outofambit\/images\/Dulac_Arabian_Nights.jpg\"><\/div>\n<p>Was watching <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-13086639\" target=\"_blank\">the BBC program last night<\/a> on the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/One_Thousand_and_One_Nights\" target=\"_blank\">Arabian Nights,<\/a> featuring Richard Grant. When they started dealing with the issue of translations, it surprised me a little that not a single word was said about <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Richard_Francis_Burton\" target=\"_blank\">Sir Richard Burton,<\/a> though a fair amount of air time was spent on <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Edward_William_Lane\" target=\"_blank\">Edward William Lane,<\/a> whose version of the <i>Thousand Nights and a Night<\/i> was extremely sanitized.<\/p>\n<p>I find myself wondering whether some scholar involved with the program had a bug up the butt about Burton&#8217;s fairly explicit translation. Granted, it&#8217;s not as if the man isn&#8217;t a source for continuing controversy: you run into scholarly opinion suggesting that Burton had committed that most heinous of offenses, &#8220;getting too close to the material&#8221; &#8212; the literary version of &#8220;going native&#8221;. Stilll, it&#8217;s odd to see an analysis of the <i>Nights<\/i> that doesn&#8217;t even mention his name. I wonder what was going on&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s interesting also to note in passing that Burton discusses Lane in his introduction to his own translation. &#8220;That amiable and devoted Arabist,&#8221; Burton calls him, and then gently takes him to task for &#8220;converting the Arabian Nights to the Arabian Chapters. Worse still, he converts some chapters into notes. He renders poetry by prose and apologizes for not omitting it altogether; &#8230; he is at once too Oriental and not Oriental enough. &#8230;Worst of all, these handsome volumes are rendered unreadable &#8230;by the stuff and stilted style of half a century ago when our prose was perhaps the worst in Europe.&#8221; (Well, don&#8217;t mince words, Sir Richard, tell us what you <i>really<\/i> think&#8230;)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Was watching the BBC program last night on the Arabian Nights, featuring Richard Grant. When they started dealing with the issue of translations, it surprised me a little that not&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[72,35,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film-and-tv","category-history","category-literature"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>What, no Burton? - Out of Ambit<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dianeduane.com\/outofambit\/2011\/04\/22\/what-no-burton\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What, no Burton? - Out of Ambit\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Was watching the BBC program last night on the Arabian Nights, featuring Richard Grant. 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