This two-volume edition of The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia is a comprehensively detailed compilation providing students with authoritative and up-to-date research on the diverse stories historically comprising the Islamic classic collection of myth, legend, and folklore known to western readers as "The Arabian Nights". The characters, themes, most influential translations, textual history, adaptations, and literary context for each individual story is proffered in a thoroughly accessible and "user friendly" arrangement.

Featuring more than 800 sperate entries organized in an A-Z format, The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia is a seminal, core, essential, informed and informative contribution to personal, professional, academic, and community library Literary Studies, Folklore Studies, and Islamic Cultural Studies reference collections and resource holdings.

To commemorate the tercentenary of the first Western edition of The Arabian Nights, Yamanaka and Nishio marry Western and Japanese perspectives to analyze the rich cross-cultural fertilization that ensued. Arabian Nights and Orientalism examines narrative motifs, and relates them to other cultures, traditions, and forms of representation. The authors place the tales in a whole range of new contexts, from 19th century British feminism to ancient Greek romance. This lavishly illustrated book explores the interplay between image and text in various editions, and sheds new light on the tales' origin in the Persian professional storytelling tradition. Robert Irwin's foreword offers an overview of critical responses to The Arabian Nights, which highlights the originality of this volume.