Metanarratives in Translation: A Case of Richard Burton’s A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments

Abstract

This paper investigates how Richard Burton reframed the original narrative of The Thousand and One Nights in alignment with the traditional Orientalist stance while translating the Nights through the translated text and its paratexts. The analysis was done by studying the translation and the footnotes of three tales in the Nights, in addition to the major paratextual material in the translation: The Terminal Essay. The researchers find that Burton has injected the Victorian Islamophobic metanarrative into the translation through his excessive annotations to accentuate the Orientalist public narrative on the East that was formulated by 19th-Century Victorian England. This is inferred from his ideas on imperialism, which were later incorporated into the translation and its paratexts. Burton represents the tales with ends that encourage imperialism, although he criticizes and condemns the Victorian moral mandate in some areas of his translation.