Otherness and Otherworldliness: Edward W. Lane’s Ethnographic Treatment of The Arabian Nights

In this article, I trace the conceptions of textual and national character that shaped Edward W. Lane’s early Victorian edition of the Arabian Nights. Lane sought to locate Alf Layla wa- Layla in a broad cultural and oral discursive context for a newly widened English readership. His treatment of the Nights offers vantage points on the interrelationship of ethnographic and fantasy genres and on the emergence of folkloristic and Orientalist discourses in popular publications.