SOURCE: Naddaff, Sandra. “Magic Time: The Movement and Meaning of Narrative Repetition.” In Arabesque: Narrative Structure and the Aesthetics of Repetition in the 1001 Nights, pp. 89-108. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1991.

In the following essay, Naddaff argues that The Arabian Nights uses repetition to structure narrative discourse, thus exploring and emphasizing the relation between time, repetition, and narrative; she goes on to examine how these structural devices are used to comment on power and gender in the tales.

I

We come finally to the crucial connection between repetition and time, a connection that, although of particular interest vis-à-vis the repetitive mode, is of course maintained with all types of narrative discourse. For all narrative must take first root in the temporal realm. Indeed, not only must narrative move within the various confines of its own temporal boundaries, but we as readers can participate in narrative only by...