How David Copperfield drew on The Arabian Nights
A documented line of influence: Charles Dickens demonstrably engaged Anonymous’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Arabian Nights
Anonymous · c. 800
MedievalThe influenced
David Copperfield
Charles Dickens · 1850
The Age of the NovelRelevance
6/10
On David Copperfield’s page
- The wonder-book that gets David through his worst years — and, Ackroyd argues, the deepest of all Dickens's literary debts
- David Copperfield names the Arabian Nights by title (Ch. 4) and turns its nightly storytelling into David's own Scheherazade act at Salem House (Ch. 7)
- Dickens is transcribing his own boyhood escape reading; meet the Nights first and you understand exactly what it was rescuing him from
On The Arabian Nights’s page
- Ackroyd calls the Arabian Nights arguably the most important of all literary influences on Dickens — and David Copperfield wears that debt on its sleeve
- David names 'the Arabian Nights, and the Tales of the Genii' among the books that keep him alive in a bleak childhood (Ch. 4)
- At Salem House the boys stage 'regular Arabian Nights,' with David cast as a small Scheherazade telling tales to survive the night (Ch. 7)