ABSTRACT
In the preceding chapter, relationships between BR as it is preserved in Vat. Ar. Ris. 368 and Arabic “love theory” literature, maqƗmƗt, and ahl al-narratives (particularly Majnnjn LeylƗ), as well as various genres of Arabic poetry, were explored. While our text undoubtedly makes use of aspects of each of these elements, there are also characteristics not explained by any of these comparisons. Perhaps principal among them is the length of the narrative, given that tastes, in an Arabic-speaking context (things are somewhat different in Persian literature, but there is to date no convincing evidence to suggest direct Persian influence on AndalusƯ literature1), run more toward shorter, linked narratives connected by a frame story, as in the cases of MaqƗmƗt, the KalƯlah wa Dimna, the Alf LaylƗ wa LaylƗ, or of the collection of slave-girl stories to which CBL 4120 belongs. This characteristic, particularly when considered in light of Vat. Ar. Ris. 368’s focus, in its second half, on themes of courtly love and the relative lack of interest in this material demonstrated by the medieval Arabic classics listed above, suggests that we must cast our net wider, or perhaps in a different direction, in a search for comparanda that might allow us to better understand BR both as a work of literature and as a functioning element of late twelfth-or early thirteenth-century AndalusƯ courtly culture.
