This article deals with the origin, content and development of the collection of The Thousand and One Nights and its reception in the Western and Eastern cultural and literary environments. The collection has been evolving in the Oriental environment for more than a thousand years. Although the original core of stories was relatively small, as the collection travelled from territory to territory, more and more narratives of various cultural and geographical origins were being added to it. Editors and translators have been modifying and reshaping its content over and over and so its character has been constantly changing. While the Western writers have considered the collection a true repository of inspiration, the opinion of the Arab intellectual elite was not always that positive.
This article deals with the work of a prominent personality from Egypt's cultural and literary community, Tawfiq al-Hakim, who was instrumental in establishing Egyptian drama. he was one of the fist defenders of folk literature and the Thousand and One Nights in Egyptian history, thus playing a crucial role in the incorporation of popular literature into modern pieces of writing. The essay covers al-Hakim's relationship with folk literature from his early childhood to his literary period as an author. Great emphasis in placed on an analysis and literary critique of his most famous play, the Shahrazad, which was inspired by a collection of folk storie. A collaborative novel that he wrote in conjunction with another influential Egyptian writer, Taha Husayn, is also mentioned., Katarína Kobzošová., and Obsahuje bibliografii