Читать книгу The Bakhtyār Nāma. A Persian Romance онлайн

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A peculiarity of most collections of Eastern fictions is their being enclosed within a frame, so to say, or leading story; as in the Arabian Nights: a plan which appears to have been introduced into Europe by a Latin translation of a romance of Indian origin, known in this country by the title of The Seven Sages, and which was first adopted by Boccaccio in his celebrated Decameron, where it is represented that a party of ladies and gentlemen, during the prevalence of the great plague in Florence, retire for safety to a mansion at some distance from the city, and there amuse themselves by relating stories. And our English poet Chaucer, after the same fashion, in his Canterbury Tales, represents a number of pilgrims, of different classes, as bound for the shrine of Thomas à Becket, and, to alleviate the tediousness of the journey, reciting stories of varied character. But although this plan of making a number of stories all subordinate to a leading story was introduced into Europe in the 13th century, when the Latin version of the “Seven Sages” was published, yet in the East it had been in vogue many centuries previously.