The Image and Representation of Scheherazade in Edgar Allan Poe’s Story The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade

The study aims to examine and investigate how Scheherazade was represented to the English reader in the nineteenth century. The significance of the study displays that Edgar Allan Poe’s story The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade endowed The Thousand and One Nights with new images and allusions. Based on André Lefevere’s notion of rewriting, the selected story is analyzed, emphasizing the new image of Scheherazade, her death, and her disappearance from the scene in the nineteenth century. The research shows how Poe depicts Scheherazade as a political damsel who reveals the truth and how she becomes a mesmerist lady who dies and disappears from the plot at the end of the story. The author implements a critical discourse analysis to analyze Poe’s story and to uncover the socio-cultural, ideological, and poetical relations of the text. After unfolding the new images of Scheherazade, the study concludes that rewriting a literary work enriches the source text with new imagery and allusions, hence the massive acclaim of such texts among new generations. In addition, the journey of such literary works across borders and cultures creates cultural interactions among people and literary traditions.