Dr. Sayed Elsisi of George Mason University's Department of Modern and Classical Languages has published a new scholarly article, “Stripping and Disclosing: Eroticism and Gnosticism in The One Thousand and One Nights,” in Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics.
Through an intertextual reading, this article seeks to probe the hidden layers of meaning embedded in the narrative and metaphorical structures of the tale of “The Porter and the Three Ladies” from One Thousand and One Nights. It offers a reading that differs from all previous critical interpretations of this story. In its effort to free the text from a superficial reading and uncover its deep symbolic and aesthetic layers, the article reveals the narrative and intertextual dimensions of nudity and the body, as well as their symbolic and gnostic significations that transcend the surface erotic level. The intertextual analysis connects numerous details in the tale to a constellation of classical heritage texts, as well as to narratives from the Qur’an, thereby helping to decipher the text’s metaphorical and symbolic codes in a way that invites a reconsideration of the presence and interpretation of the body and nudity in the enduring text of the Nights.