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While most people know something about the so-called "Arabian Nights," there is a great deal about this world-famous collection's origins and development that remains unknown. In the worlds of Western art--music, painting, poetry, stories, fashion, and so on--the effect that the publication of the collection of tales had on its recipients has been profound and often distorting. It is the purpose (hope) of this lecturer to shed some light on all these matters, firstly by examining the collection's basic (and original) framework and then by considering the impact that it has had over the ensuing years and centuries. In June 2011 Roger Allen retired from his position as the Sascha Jane Patterson Harvie Professor of Social Thought and Comparative Ethics in the School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also served Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature in the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations for 43 years. From 2005-11 he served as Chair of the Department. In 2008 he was elected President of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) for the year 2009-2010. Among his published studies on Arabic literature are: The Arabic Novel: an historical and critical introduction (1st edition 1982, Arabic edition, 1986; 2nd edition 1995, 2nd Arabic edition 1998), and The Arabic Literary Heritage in 1998 (and in abbreviated paperback form in 2000, as Introduction to Arabic Literature). Both of these works have also been published in Arabic translation. He has served in multiple editorial capacities, most recently as Series Editor of Essays in Arabic Literary Biography (3 vols.)--Harrassowitz. He is currently modern Arabic literature sub-editor for the Encyclopedia of Islam 3rd ed. In the late 1960s Roger Allen began to concentrate his research on modern Arabic fiction. He began by translating a collection of short stories by Naguib Mahfouz, God’s World (1973) and also translated into English Mahfouz’s Autumn Quail (1985), Mirrors (1st edition, 1977; 2nd edition 1999), Karnak Café (2007), Khan al-Khalili (2008) and One Hour Left (2010). In addition to the fiction of Mahfouz, he has also translated (and worked closely with) Jabra Ibrahim Jabra (The Ship, and In Search of Walid Masoud, both translated in conjunction with Adnan Haydar), Yusuf Idris (the collection of stories, In the Eye of the Beholder, `Abd al-rahman Munif (Endings), Mayy Telmissany (Dunyazad), BenSalim Himmich (The Polymath (2004), The Theocrat (2005), A Muslim Suicide (2011), and My Torturess (2015)), Ahmad al-Tawfiq (Abu Musa’s Women Neighbors (2006) and Moon and Henna Tree (2013)), and Hanan al-Shaykh (The Locust and the Bird (2009)). DR. ROGER ALLENEMERITUS PROFESSOR OF ARABIC & COMPARATIVE LITERATUREDEPARTMENT OF NEAR EASTERN LANGUAGES & CIVILIZATIONSUNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA MENAS Colloquium SeriesFriday, March 6, 20154:15pm in McClelland Park 103,650 N. Park Ave. Reception to follow5:30pm in Bonine Commons, Marshall 440,845 N. Park Ave. Click to return to main Colloquium pageVideo of the talk