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In Praise of Double Sexuality in the Thousand and One Nights: the Geste of Boudour

An Anthropological Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Michel Matarasso
Michel Matarasso*
Affiliation:
Laboratoire d'athropologie comparée, Université de Paris, X
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Extract

Among the many story groups of The Thousand, and One Nights, few demonstrate with such clarity, precision and even some audacity the vicissitudes, privileges, fortunes and joys of sexual polymorphism. The geste of Boudour belongs to such a cycle.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 30 , Issue 118 , June 1982 , pp. 12 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

Notes

1 This title only appears in the Mardrus translation. Is it part of the enigmatic and now lost fourth volume which Galland mentions? On this point see N. Eliseeff, Thèses et motifs des Mille et une nuits, Inst. franç., Beirut, 1949, p. 56-72. Moreover narrative 2 seems of a different source and much later than narrative 1. Additionally, the character of masculine sovereignty is much more pronounced.

2 A certain number of these attitudes come from joke relations as we shall see. Cf. Mauss, Oeuvres, Ed. de Minuit. On the laugh and sexuality, cf. Freud, "Fragments posthumes" in L'Arc (issue on Freud). L. Gernet, Anthropologie de la Grèce ancienne, Maspero, 1968, p. 82 ff. H. Jeanmaire, Dionysos, Histoire du culte de Bacchus, Payot, 1951, p. 316, on mania. Cl. Lévi-Strauss, Le Cru et le cuit, Les Mythologiques, Plon, 1964, p. 117. M. 28. Warrau, origin of the stars, in the narrative of the laugh as prelude to sexuality with the eldest daughter. Cf. also G. Condominas (note 38, below).

3 Structures élémentaires de la parenté, P.U.F., 1949.

4 There is an excellent discussion of these types of approach to the tale in A. Miquel, Sept contes des Mille et une nuits, Sinbad, 1981, p. 251 ff. by the author of the work, Cl. Brémond, J. Bencheikh and others.

5 In The Ship of Fools (1480) S. Brandt uses tarot figures to support his narrative. See also O. Wirth, Le Tarot, preface by R. Caillois, Tchou, 1966.

6 For certain exceptions, cf. J. Bril, Lilith ou la mère obscure, Payot, 1981.

7 C. Lévi-Strauss, "La geste d'Asdiwal" in Annales, Ecole pratique des hautes études (sc. rel.), Paris, 1958, p. 3-43 Les Mythologiques, Plon.

8 Histoire d'Amgiad et d'Assad, op cit.

9 "Poème à Boudour endormie" (Mardrus, 580), op. cit.

10 Unpublished letter of A. Gide, reproduced in the preface-notice by Marc Fumaroli of the new Mardrus edition, op. cit. Cf. the notice itself.

11 Mardrus arrived in France a little before 1895 and frequented the salon of Mallarmé and that of Heredia.

12 Les Nourritures were published in 1897, and the first volume of the Thousand and one nights in 1899.

13 Les Nourritures terrestres, Ed. Gallimard, 1935, p. 57.

14 C. Lévi-Strauss, Le Cru et le cuit. Les Mythologiques, Plon, 1964, p. 64.

15 R. Hertz, La Prééminence de la main droite, 1909, reprinted in Mélanges de sociologie religieuse et folklore, Alcan, 1928, Re-published P.U.F., 1970.

16 H. Corbin, La Philosophie iranienne islamique aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, Buchet-Chastel; and Cahiers de l'Herne dedicated to Henry Corbin, No. 39, 1981. On Alchemy see J. van Lennep, Art alchimique, Brussels, 1966.

17 M. Matarasso, "Robert Hertz notre prochain", Année sociologique, 1973, vol. 24 p. 119-147.

18 R. Jakobson, Essais de linguistique générale, Ed. de Minuit, 1963.

19 R. Barthes, Le Système de la mode, Seuil, 1967.

20 Chr. David, "Les belles différences", Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse, 7; 1973, p. 231 ff.

21 O. Rank, Don Juan. Une étude sur le double, Denoël, 1932, p. 135 ff.

22 O. Rank, op. cit., p. 192.

23 Reprinted in La Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse, 7, 1973, Gallimard, p. 5-8.

24 M. Eliade, Mephistopheles et L'Androgyne, Paris, Gallimard, 1962, p. 123; cf. also Marie Delcourt, Hermaphrodite, 1958.

25 O. Rank, op. cit.; cf. also Marie Delcourt, Hermaphroditéa, 1966.

26 F. Cachin, "Monsieur Vénus et l'ange de Sodome", Nouv. rev. psy., op. cit., p. 63-69.

27 M. Griaule, "Remarque sur l'oncle utérin au Soudan", Cah. Int. Socio., 26, 1954, p. 35-49. G. Tillion, Le Harem et les cousins, 1966.

28 Freud, op. cit., on the laugh.

29 M. Detienne and J.-P. Vernant, Les Ruses de l'intelligence, La Mètis des grecs, "coll. Braudel", Paris, Flammarion, 1974. (Metis, already pregnant by her husband Zeus, is swallowed by him. Zeus then gave birth to Athena. Metis appears in two important versions: Theogony by Hesiod and Theogony attributed to the orphics. Her fate endured for ten centuries in literature).

30 Id. Ibid., p. 142.

31 On the inversion of poles in Chinese hierogamy, cf. L. Granet, Pensée chinoise, Albin Michel, 1980, p. 132—Inverted tree with the roots in the sky.

32 Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors.

33 L. Granet, op. cit.

34 R. Caillois, La Dissymétrie, Gallimard, 1973.

35 Is it necessary to recall that the Nobel Prize in physics for 1968 was awarded to Lee and Yang for their work on antiparity?

36 J. Baudrillard, La Séduction, Gonthier, Paris. Along with this excellent analysis should be read Jean Chalon, Portrait d'une séductrice, Stock, 1976.

37 G. Deleuze and G. Guattari, Ed. du Seuil, 1972.

38 G. Condominas, L'Espace social with regard to South-east Asia, Flamma rion, 1978.

39 P. Radin, G. Jung, Ch. Kerényi, Le Fripon divin, Paris, 1968.

40 M. Kundera, La Plaisanterie, Gallimard, 1968.