In Defense of Story-Telling: A Comparative Study of “Sindbad the Sailor” from The Thousand and One Nights, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

Document Type : Research Paper

Abstract

In comparison with structure and thematic elements, the significance of story-telling in “Sindbad the Sailor” from The Thousand and One Nights, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” has not been taken into serious consideration by researchers. Every story as an ideological construct of discursive interactions, is a carrier of certain ideologies. Ideology has the power to shape identities, and creates the myth of the seaman as a national hero in the two mentioned texts. Since ideology is false consciousness, it can debunk the shaped myth as well. A comparative study of the two texts with emphasis on story-telling and its power to contain and carry certain ideologies would reveal that each story can create and debunk illusory concepts leaving the addressee of each narrator with a changed picture of the sea hero back from his sea voyage.

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Research in Contemporary World Literature
Volume 19, Issue 2
November 2014
Pages 173-190

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