ABSTRACT

The European value of Alf layla wa layla was initially defined by the popularity and commercial success of the Arabian Nights franchise-a fact that raises questions about the essential appeal of the text that remain difficult to answer. Just as the category of modern literature was coalescing into a discrete subject, and just as the ascendant genre of the novel was gaining in popularity, a text of distant temporal and geographic sources came to occupy a prominent place in discussions on literature’s value in modern society. The debates around the use of the Nights for moral, utilitarian, romantic, or other ends show how widely the range of possible merits of the text extended, and the extent to which the text was made to speak for social anxieties and aspirations that were tied generally to the emergence of the categories of modern literature and mass readerships. As the previous chapter has argued, the text’s flexibilities were part of its appeal, and very much arose from its transactability.