However, the first literary version of Aladdin can be traced back to a French author, Antoine Galland, who claimed to have heard the tale from a Syrian storyteller while on his travels.Īladdin and His Wonderful Lamp, by Sir Richard Burton, is one of many adaptations of Galland’s Aladdin, and it follows the plotline established when the story first entered the Western literary community in the early 18th century. The origin of Aladdin is disputed amongst historians, but many believe that the story first appeared in One Thousand and One Nights, a collection of stories that originated in the early 9th century. Merging these distinct Asian cultures may be indicative of Americans’ insensitivity toward the richness and diversity of Asian societies. The story, however, is set in China, occasionally referred to as “Chinaland.” Bock’s illustrations also emulate the style of Chinese artwork. The characters’ names are of Syrian origin, and references to Allah indicate that the characters are Muslim. Similar to the 1710 version, White’s book blends elements from east Asia and the Middle East. In this edition, we can see the influence of Orientalism, a mode of discourse that stereotypes the East as a single entity. Furthermore, the yellow palette in Vera Bock’s illustrations may reference the color of gold. experienced while most other countries struggled amidst the postwar devastation. In White’s book, the jinnis act as passive vessels through which wealth flows, which may be a reflection of the post-World War II economic prosperity that the U.S. Readers of this edition of Aladdin may have relished the fantasy of climbing to the top of the social ladder due to its parallels with the American Dream, especially in wake of the Great Depression. Aladdin seeks help from the jinni of the lamp to marry Princess Badroulbadour, and when the lamp and the Princess are captured by a magician, he calls on the jinni of the ring to help him get them back. In both versions, Aladdin is a lazy boy who gains wealth and status after summoning the “jinnis” of the ring and the lamp. And the genies, characters whose identities have changed the most with every new sociocultural adaptation, look like a mashup of cultural types.Īnne White’s 1959 American version of Aladdin has a nearly identical plot to Antoine Galland’s original 1710 French edition. Most of the background characters, included to create a landscape for the text, have stereotypical Middle Eastern features. While Aladdin and the princess are notably depicted as Caucasian, the villain, an African magician, displays grotesque, exaggerated features. The illustrations in this book attest to its incongruent cultural identity. With subsequent translations, however, many of the less “Arabic” references have slowly dropped out. For example, while the story is believed to be of Middle Eastern origin, the earliest Western versions were set in China and include allusions to India and Africa. This text resists Galland’s original in several important ways, but remnants of the early European tradition remain. The author of this book is not specified, but its plot and style align closely with Andrew Lang’s well-known 1898 translation. This 1905 version comes at a crossroads in the tale’s transmission history. Galland’s popular publication spurred a host of subsequent adaptations of varying consistency and cohesion. The story was introduced into Western discourse in the early 18th century, when French translator Antoine Galland inserted it into his translation of One Thousand and One Nights, despite the story’s absence from the original Syrian manuscript. Emerging from Middle Eastern oral tradition, Aladdin has made its way across the globe, changing slightly with each transmission.
Over the course of its long, complicated history, the story of Aladdin has undergone a transformation as tumultuous as the tale itself.
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