Some Notes on Sheherezade & The 1001 Nights
Some Notes on Sheherezade & The 1001 Nights

Summary/Abstract: Sheherezade’s inventions of timelessness have an interesting millennium-long history, but they are culturally urgent now, in the twenty-first century, when human storytellers are being replaced by storytelling machines. The 1001 Nights are as important now to the survival of humans in general as they were to the survival of women in particular at the time Sheherezade told them. Reading The 1001 Nights in the key of surviving imminent extinction leads to some surprising discoveries, one of which is the accurate measurement of the mythical-human era, a time-bound entity between the animal and posthuman ages. This is the central theme of the present essay.

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