Reading Diary A: Voyages of Sindbad

Topic: I had some sort of mixed feelings about Sindbad as a whole. I'm sure it's some sort of storytelling method, but I didn't particularly enjoy how each of his voyages mostly followed the same basic structure, even down to reuniting with the original captain and recovering his shipment of goods. I read Ovid's Metamorphoses previously and they seemed to more or less follow a constantly changing storyline, which I appreciated. I just found these stories too repetitive. I did enjoy the stories of Sindbad once he had become trapped in one place or another though, especially on the island with the one-eyed giants. It was definitely very interesting the parallels this story had to one of the tales of Odysseus. We aren't especially far into this class but I definitely feel as though repitition of themes and even plotlines is a very common thing across cultures. This could possibly be put down to plagiarism but I think a more benign explanation for it is that storytellers want to put tales in a context that their listeners will understand and appreciate. So if a storyteller from Baghdad heard the tale of Odysseus, it actually makes a lot of sense for him to translate it over to Sindbad so his listeners can relate better.

Table of Contents:
Voyages of Sindbad
The Arabian Nights' Entertainments by Andrew Lang and illustrated by H. J. Ford (1898).

The one-eyed giant that eats many of the sailors