Framing Narratives: Expanding the Narratological Frame Concept for the Study of the Premodern Arabic Tradition

The theory of frame narratives emerged to attend to the discussion of modern Western fictional prose. Within this context, the Thousand and One Nights was often used as a prime example for depicting the levels and dynamics of framing (Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library). The Arabic literary tradition, however, most notably before the age of print, offers a fecund field to interrogate, apply, and expand the framing concept.¹For an introduction to the Middle Eastern frame tales cf. Full reference in Zotero Library, and more general: Full reference in Zotero Library. See also the collective volume including a few studies on Arabic frame narratives: Full reference in Zotero Library. Studies like Full reference in Zotero Library, Full reference in Zotero Library and Full reference in Zotero Library have offered insightful studies on the entanglement of Arabic frame narratives with (other) European literary histories. In fact, since at least the eighth century CE writers and storytellers in Arabic have produced, transmitted, and transformed a number of famous frame tales which, like the Nights, ought to be regarded as part of World Literature such as Kalīla and Dimna, The Book of Sindbad/The Seven Viziers, and The Tale of Barlaam and Josaphat, to name a few.²For studies on these traditions in addition to the Disciplina Clericalis cf. Full reference in Zotero Library. Also, while the term frame tale or frame narrative is often meant to highlight a specific genre, in this piece, I will argue that the use of “frame” shall serve to showcase the connectedness of complex narrative works like the ones mentioned above with the broader narrative culture and Arabo-Islamic erudition. In this regard, I shall build upon recent contributions that suggest expanding the framing concept from a classical narratological notion to a ‘literary framing’ (Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library).³See also earlier contributions by Full reference in Zotero Library and Full reference in Zotero Library, and considering several notions discussed in this article, Full reference in Zotero Library, who all contribute to the notion of the frame as a broader literary category. In so doing, I suggest to reconceptualise the metaphor of the frame in order to harness framing narratives as a programmatic term. Instead of applying the more static “frame”, “framing” shall foreground the dynamic intratextual and intertextual relationships within textual production. Besides, the compound “framing narrative”⁴“Frame story” or “frame narrative” is used more frequently. Among those in narratology that use “framing narratives”, see Full reference in Zotero Library. will denote complex narrative texts where more than one dimension of framing is at play and different types of narratives or texts are co-functional and overlap.

My focus, herein, will be the discussion of four notions of textual or artisitic framing: frame tale or frame narrative, mise en reflet/en série, paratext, and parergon. I shall showcase these notions of framing mainly with examples from the narrative tradition of Kalīla and Dimna, one of the most central and oldest prose works in classical Arabic literature of both popular use and rewriting up to today. Due to its complexity, such a text serves as a perfect example for framing narratives. I shall also illustrate some of the framing concepts by referring to other narrative works in Arabic: apart from The Thousand and One Nights (Alf layla wa-layla) a recurring example will be the Biography of the Prophet Muḥammad (al-Sīra al-nabawiyya), a nonfictional textual tradition and probably the oldest coherent prose work in Arabic, containing a typical feature of Arabo-Islamic erudition: the chain of transmitters of a report (ar. isnād), known from the Hadith, the collected words and deeds of the prophet. The isnād, in the strict sense of the term, is both an epistemological tool and a framing device that helps dissociate the notion of narrative framing from an ontological fictionality. The logic of isnād contains both a communal and a dialogical character of narrative. In its broader sense, it is at the same time, I argue, embedded in the makeup of many texts that are considered popular and fictional literature. In the following, another recurring example will be, therefore, the Book of Sindbad/Seven Viziers as classical frame tale and a model for other framing narratives, which contains a dialogical setting of storytelling.

On frames and framing

The possible meanings of “frame” in relation to texts are multifarious. Two main imports associate frame either with patterns of cognition (framing 1) or with a textual form or genre (framing 2).⁵Here I exclude the notion of the material, e.g., picture frame, which is, however, tackled with the parergon concept. While framing 1 is part of everyday social practice of ordering information, framing 2 stands as an analytical concept for the study of—traditionally—fictional, literature. What both notions have in common, however, is that a frame marks a boundary between two different existential spheres, of which one can be perceived as outside while the other, the framed, as inside.

In Erving Goffman’s sense (of framing 1), a frame (or framework) is there to organise experience Full reference in Zotero Library, also functioning as a boundary or a filter, which decides what does and does not participate in social reality Full reference in Zotero Library. Put in broader terms, framing as a cognitive selection process is the central mechanism of meaning making Full reference in Zotero Library. This is also fundamental for the process of listening to stories or reading texts. Frames are the basic means of understanding situations through cognitive gap-filling Full reference in Zotero Library. Such activity is rooted in socio-cultural habits and conventions: ‘Interpretation of the simplest utterances depends […] on acts of framing of which readers are generally unaware, and which are often beyond their control’ Full reference in Zotero Library. In this sense, framing is a premise for interpretation in every-day life.

In framing 2, a frame narrative, as it has been depicted in classical narratology, brings distinct textual units into a relationship with one another, that is, a diegesis (or a story world) with a metadiegesis (Full reference in Zotero Library; or a secondary story world); in doing so, framing 2 serves not to exclude but to order and entangle existential spheres.⁶A copyist of a Kalīla-and-Dimna manuscript, supposedly from the fourteenth century CE, added an incipit which hints at an awareness of the framing structure depicting 340 “inserted” or “entangled stories” ( وثلثمائة وأربعون أحدوثةً مداخلة بعضها في بعضٍ. ; Full reference in Zotero Library). Besides, in contrast to framing 1, the frame is rather obvious and, as such, can become an object of study.

The concern of this contribution is primarily with framing 2. An overlap with framing 1, however, is unavoidable, as the analysis of the relation of textual parts to one another is premised on meaning-making; in other words, what is a frame and what is not is itself primed by a selection process based on the author’s and/or the reader’s understanding. This is particularly relevant for the premodern contexts of text production in which the conditions of presenting narrative are different to modern literary conventions due to specific material (manuscripts) and social conditions. For example, especially in the first centuries of Islam, texts are transmitted by memorisation, more often read aloud in collective settings; throughout premodern and early modern Arabic history, orality and literacy overlapped heavily (Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library). Besides, many texts, most notably the aforementioned framing narratives, display a high degree of mouvance concerning chapters, chapter order, narrative segments, and word choice (Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library).

It is mostly for that reason that I prefer to use the participle framing over the more static rendering of “frame”. Framing always involves a process Full reference in Zotero Library. Attempting to understand how framing occurs in a text, one does not merely study stable structures but rather infers meaning on various ends, trying to grasp what constitutes a frame and how text and frame or reader and frame may interact. In fact, the inescapable blending of framing (1) with framing (2) becomes clear when the narratological concept of the frame narrative proves to be a good heuristic starting point, but has its limitations when trying to grasp several dynamics in premodern Arabic narrative. In the following, I shall first focus on the notion of the frame tale.

Frame tale

The frame narrative or French récit cadre or the German Rahmenerzählung, in Arabic al-qiṣṣa al-iṭār, as an analytical term is an invention of the early nineteenth century (Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library). This term has been used to describe fictional texts in which narratives are enclosed within narratives. For some, thinking of Shahrazād performing for Shahriyār or the sessions of the ten friends in the Decameron, the frame narrative evokes the oral ‘Ursituation’ of narration (W. Kayser quoted in Full reference in Zotero Library). Hence, narrative framing attempts to combine an oral setting of storytelling with a textual form, in which the primary narrator often remains a rather neutral, if not anonymous, voice (see Full reference in Zotero Library). In narratological terms, such as Gérard Genette’s usage in his seminal Discours du Récit, the visual metaphor of the frame is explained by the fact that a narrative act takes place in the story world. It is diegetic or intradiegetic (Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library); in other words, in most cases, a character relates a story orally.

In the Arabo-Islamic tradition, the dynamic of framing and embedding can be genealogically linked to the story of Khurāfa, whose name signifies “tale”. His story is presented by the prophet Muḥammad and finds a cognate in the Thousand and One Nights (Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library). The first known indepedent framing narrative in the classical Arabic tradition is Kalīla and Dimna from the first half of the eighth century CE. The core of the book contains a dialogue between the Indian king Dabshalīm and his adviser, the philosopher Baydabā. The king asks the philosopher to instruct him about certain topics of morality concerning virtuous rule, such as fathoming social hierarchies (at the court), animosity and warfare, friendship, or effective reasoning. Baydabā then recounts, mostly, exempla (Arabic amthāl, sg. mathal) in the form of fables responding to the king’s quest to explain or illustrate the teaching of wisdom (ḥikma). In Arabic, as in all other linguistic traditions in which the work was and is available, the prefaces to the book tell us that Kalīla and Dimna is mediated through Sasanian scholars who themselves, however, had no contact with the two protagonists mentioned above. Also here, it is an anonymous narrator who reproduces the dialogue between Baydabā and Dabshalīm. Baydabā takes the role of a secondary or intradiegetic narrator.

The same thing happens in the Book of Sindbad/the Seven Viziers (known in the West among others as The Seven Sages) in which most narratives are introduced in a ritualistic, that is a recurring design. The specific form of the Seven Viziers is dialogical, where seven advisers (viziers) and an ingenious king’s concubine debate whether the king’s son shall be executed. The concubine accuses the king’s heir of trying to make advances toward her, hence she wants to see him executed, while the viziers responding to her stories manage to delay the prince’s execution from day to day through equally persuasive storytelling. The book displays a ‘fighting with tales’ Full reference in Zotero Library between the two parties, the viziers and the concubine, so that the particular word choice of the ritualised passages depends on the speaker. The viziers, in many Arabic versions of the work, each relate to two stories, one cautioning the king against hasty thoughtless action, the other one being taken in by the ruses of women:

…وقد بلغني عن مكر النساء وكيدهم ان

[On the topic of the cunning and wiles of women, I have also heard the story of (the man who sent his wife to the market with a dirham to buy some rice…)] Full reference in Zotero Library.

In Kalīla and Dimna as in the Thousand and One Nights, in which stories are equally introduced in such ritualistic fashion, further levels of embedding occur, which can be described either numerically Full reference in Zotero Library or by their positioning in the overall narrative system of the text. For instance, the chapter of ‘The Ringdove’, presented by the philosopher Baydabā in Kalīla includes three embedded narratives on three additional diegetic levels. The ‘Tale of the Hunchback’ in the Nights contains three additional levels of embedding, comprising twelve additional story worlds (Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library).

In his analytical system, Genette has created an elaborate vocabulary for describing the relationship between the narrator and the narrated world in narrative texts. Fundamental to this system are questions about the narrator’s (degree of) participation in the diegesis as a character (heterodiegetic, homodiegetic, or autodiegetic) and questions about the narrator’s position in relation to the entire narrative (extradiegetic or intradiegetic). Like Shahrazād, Baydabā is to be understood both as a secondary, intradiegetic, and heterodiegetic narrator.⁷For another example: Just like many embedded, i.e., meta-meta-diegetic narratives in the Nights, the embedded narratives in “The Ringdove,” mentioned above, are partially of a heterodiegetic, and partially of a homodiegetic character Full reference in Zotero Library.

Apart from this nomenclature, the classical frame tale is associated with the metaphor of mise en abyme. The term signifying ‘into the abyss’, implies that the embedded narrative reiterates the frame, thereby impacting its signification Full reference in Zotero Library. While, strictly speaking, mise en abyme would signify a possibly endless repetition of identical or similar signifiers, already the simple doubling of narration can be seen as such, in precise terms: a mise en abyme of narration (‘mise en abyme des Erzählens’, Full reference in Zotero Library).

Adopting this broad definition, the mise en abyme relies on a clear boundary between narrative (or other artistic) entities. Since the identification of an enframed entity in the narratological sense depends on markers of quoted speech, premodern narratives do not always allow for an unambiguous framing: quoted speech is most clearly indicated by punctuation, linguistic register changes, or formatting strategies in modern publications; in Arabic manuscript culture, however, quoted speech is often, but not always, indicated by signal words such as verbs denoting an act of speaking. Moreover, there are numerous genre terms and corresponding verbs that mark new narrative sections, be it a change of speaker, a change of narrative position, or a change of episode, highlighted, for instance, by the use of a term for ‘story’ or a verb for ‘telling’ (khabar – akhbara, ḥadīth – ḥaddatha, ḥikāya – ḥakā, etc.).⁸This is featured, for example, in narrative texts that take up and render literary colloquial aspects such as the marking of narrative segments or sometimes ostensibly inaccurate separation of speech positions. An example of this is the linguistically ambiguous embedding strategies of the Thousand-and-One-Nights story teller Ḥannā Diyāb in his Book of Travels, in which the embedding of autodiegetic narratives in an autodiegetic text, at times, blurs the boundaries between the frame and framed. See on Ḥannā Diyāb’s framing: Full reference in Zotero Library. Apart from this difference between representations of narrative in modern and premodern textual production, there are two main aspects to be dealt with when discussing narrative framing in the Arabic literary tradition before the nineteenth century.

First, the frame tale is associated with fictionality.⁹See Full reference in Zotero Library. However, in premodern Arabic literature, a clear-cut definition of fictionality as an attribution to whole works is not given before the twentieth century. Since narrative framing is obviously used to negotiate the ontological status of stories—whether or to what extent they are true, credible, possible, or plausible—the assumed non-fictionality of works shall not prevent us from looking at the framing dynamics (see Full reference in Zotero Library). For it is evident that framing devices are also used in texts that are usually considered nonfictional, like historiographical works, as we shall see with the following aspect.

Second, a complicated aspect that requires an extension of the classical concept of the frame tale is the question of narrativity: when is a narrative a narrative? Starting from a minimal notion, according to which the telling of a temporal sequence of events to someone signifies a narrative Full reference in Zotero Library, narrative acts themselves can also function as narratives Full reference in Zotero Library. In the Arabo-Islamic context, this is especially relevant for the well-known authentication strategy of the isnād (chain of transmission),¹⁰On the isnād as a framing device, see Full reference in Zotero Library. which, in an often rudimentary fashion, is applied in works usually considered adab (belles-lettres) such as the maqāmāt,¹¹See the insight by Asmaa Essakouti. but most prominently found in Hadith literature, the sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muḥammad, and in (other) Arabo-Islamic historiographical writings in the broad sense of the word, among others in the prosopographical works of Sufism (ṭabaqāt).

The earliest extant example of Arabo-Islamic historiographies is the so-called biography of the Prophet Muḥammad (al-Sīra al-nabawiyya) by Ibn Isḥāq (d. 767 AD), which in its most famous version was written through the mediation of a later scholar called Ibn Hishām (d. 828/833 AD), who redacted and selected accounts himself.¹²On the genre of sīra/the biography of the prophet: Full reference in Zotero Library, on the difference between the genres Hadith and sīra concerning the asānīd, transmitter chains: see Full reference in Zotero Library, which offers a comprehensive introduction to the Hadith. See also Full reference in Zotero Library, who thematises the proximity of Hadith to the historiographic genres and dedicates a subchapter to M. Ibn Isḥāq. In addition to the recurring citation of Ibn Isḥāq’s unpreserved version in Ibn Hishām’s account, earlier transmitters of narrative sections also are mentioned again and again. Thus, multiple linked, sometimes complicated chains of transmission emerge—such as the reports of the beginning of the revelation when the angel Jibrāʾīl descended to Muḥammad to let him recite the Qurʾān. The following passage informs the reader about the place of the revelation:

قال ابن إسحاق: حدّثني وْهب بن كَيْسان، مولى آل الزُبير. قال: سمعت عبدالله بن الزُبير وهو يقول لعُبَيد بن عمير بن قَتَادة الليثي: حدّثْنا يا عُبيد، كيف كان بدء ما ابتُديء به رسول الله – صلعم – من النبوّة حين جاءه جبريل عليه السلام؟ قال: فقال عُبيد – وأنا حاضر يُحدّث عبدَالله بن الزبير، ومَن عنده من اللناس: كان رسول الله – صلعم – يجاور في حِرَاء من كل سنة شهرًا، وكان ذلك مما تَحنَّث به قريش في الجاهلية. والتحنث: التبَرُّر.

[Ibn Isḥāq said (q): Wahb b. Kaysān, the client of the Zubayr clan, informed me saying (q): I heard ʿAbdallāh b. al-Zubayr saying to (q) ʿUbayd b. ʿUmayr b. Qatāda al-Laythī: Tell us, o ʿUbayd, how was the beginning of the messenger of God’s—may God honor him and grant him peace—prophethood, when Jibrāʾīl, peace upon him, came to him? He (Wahb b. Kaysān) said (q) that ʿUbayd told (q) ʿAbdallāh b. al-Zubayr and whoever was with him from among the people—while I was present: The Messenger of God—may God honor him and grant him peace—was in the vicinity of Ḥirāʾ, every year one month, and this is where the Quraysh (the prophet’s tribe, J. S.) stayed for taḥannuth in the time of ignorance (the pre-Islamic time, al-jāhiliyya J. S.), and taḥannuth means devotional practice.] (Full reference in Zotero Library, my translation)

In such historiographic narrative, a frequently used term among others is the verb qāl (‘s/he said’, indicated above with q), which always refers back to the actual, if not initial narrator. This simple verb is of crucial importance for all kinds of reported speech, be it written or oral, often serving as a marker of a new narrative unit Full reference in Zotero Library. Be that as it may, following Genette’s model, narrative processes are strung together here through personal contact, the hearing of personal accounts and dialogues, reaching back to what is, in principle, another homodiegetic situation. For ideally, the initial narrator is from among the companions of the prophet (the ṣaḥāba), and thus participates in what could be called Muḥammad’s story world. Consequently, the narrator quoted by Ibn Isḥāq, Wahb b. Kaysān, emphasises his own role as a witness to what ʿUbayd had to say (‘I heard [him] saying’, ‘[…] while I was present’).¹³See on the narratological analysis of Islamic historiographical literature Beaumont Full reference in Zotero Library.

Getting back to our question of narrativity, however, the concept of diegesis is debatable in this context, since it highlights the spatial dimension or, at least, alludes to a relatively defined sphere of action, as we know it from works of fiction (Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library). In a text like the Sīra, as an ordered collection of the prophet’s deeds, rather the temporal and inter-social dimensions seem important.¹⁴On the temporality of the isnād , cf. Full reference in Zotero Library. The linking of different temporal levels is also foregrounded through the repetitiveness of the overall episodic narrative, which can only be preserved by a joint effort of the transmitters and compilers who remember and record the experiences of the deceased authorities. This communal character also consists of a dialogical, multi-narratorial situation; it transcends the boundaries between past and present and is, therefore, typical for classical Arabo-islamic historiographical literature and Islamic erudition at large.¹⁵Görke Full reference in Zotero Library delineates the Sīra literature as a compilation that has multiple authors. When looking at such historiographical work as a framing narrative, it becomes clear that the chain of transmission (isnād) is indispensable for the whole text and its semantic coherence. It cannot be looked at as a mere formal addition, being simply an authentication strategy to the transmitted report or story, the content (called matn). Rather, it offers a particular perspective on narrativity itself. The obvious blending of form and content points to the communal character of framing narratives altogether as well as their essential polyphony, most notably in the aforementioned book of The Seven Viziers and its cognates.

While the study of chains of transmission (asānīd) can inform our understanding of what narrative framing can imply, texts known as frame narratives can, in turn, be read in light of such a notion of transmission. In a sense, Kalīla and Dimna, at least as it exists in the Arabic version, offers such an isnād, crossing and connecting different time periods. It thereby provides a sense of an in modern terms —transcultural—community of wisdom, with a movement spanning different geographical areas: India, Pre-Islamic Iran, and Abbasid Baghdad. In particular, in the oldest Kalīla-and-Dimna manuscript known today (Ayasofia 4095), with the first preface by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, a chain of transmission is initiated (Full reference in Zotero Library; see Full reference in Zotero Library). The latter is usually surrounded or followed by two or three prefaces produced by Sasanian mediators, which finally reach back to the aforementioned claimed originator of the Indian book, Baydabā.

In sum, the above examples of Kalīla and Dimna and the Sīra illustrate that the classical frame narrative is an asymmetrical concatenation: narratives depend on their representation in chronologically younger narratives, with the latter reactivating the former. Thus, in the sense of a chain of transmission, a frame narrative connects different time levels, usually past time periods, with the present of the narrative process appearing as the reader’s first point of contact with the ancient book or a community of witnesses. The re-evocation of a narrative situation, between narrator and listener or reader, or between different narrators is not specific to the classical frame tale. Rather, the framing narrative emphasises the basic condition of narrativity as necessarily mediated through different voices.

Apart from the questions of fictionality and narrativity, a third issue with the applicability and utility of the Genetteian system is the question of the involvement of the narrator in the story world. Traditionally, one would think of the frame narrative as a heterodiegetic narrative, of which Shahrazād’s or Baydabā’s tales are exemplary. However, in homodiegetic or autodiegetic narratives, in which qua definition the narrator is also a character in the story world, the distinction between extradiegetic and intradiegetic narrative parts may seem less obvious at first sight. This is the case in the Qur’an, as I will detail below, as well as in other texts that do not contain a narrative character in the strict sense, but provide an argument or the elaboration of a topic. At a closer look, such texts still employ narrative modes in multiple instances. Also, these varying textual types contain a variety of framings with which the next section is concerned.

Mise en série / mise en reflet

In the classical narratological sense, digressions by a primary extradiegetic narrator are not considered embeddings. A prominent example is the Qur’an. Although the Qur’an is usually not presented as a frame narrative, one can find in it multiple interpolated narratives, which are similarly inserted as commemorative speech acts or self-quotations, often reminding the audience, the early believers, and their opponents, of biblical narratives (see Full reference in Zotero Library). Since the Qur’an is not a book of history, but itself revelation, God, albeit in various names and varying pronouns (for the first and third person), remains the one narrator of these accounts. Interpreting the Qur’anic text as a framing narrative serves as a means to highlight the understanding of a multi-layered dialogical situation, containing changes between temporal spheres and a continuous production of a particular temporal community—which is able to transcend long lasting temporal divisions and is directed toward salvation. In contrast to historical approaches, the interpretive decision to read the Qur’an as a framing narrative foregrounds the text’s complicated role of being a self-referential discourse for the perennial here and now that, overall, suspends narrativity, as constrained by being either past or future. Secondary narratives appear, therefore, for rhetorical purposes, as inserted in God’s omnipresent speech. Often the Qurʾan makes use of the term mathal (parable) which the book shares with Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ and Kalīla and Dimna

In other autodiegetic narratives, such as one of the oldest autobiographies in Arabic Full reference in Zotero Library, the preface to Kalīla and Dimna, by the supposedly Sasanian philosopher Barzawayh, the interpolated secondary narratives appear as a subtle mode shift between story worlds and narrative positioning vis-à-vis the inserted parables. Like the biblical narratives inserted in the Qur’anic discourse, the secondary narratives, here, function as texts in their own right and are therefore indicated, as such, in the recent edition-cum-translation, published with the Library of Arabic Literature. In his preface, Barzawayh the physician ponders possible ethical systems to follow, of which he abandons each. Having arrived at what in modern parlance translates as “religion” (dīn, diyāna),¹⁶Since “religion” is an extremely broad and vague category, dīn in this context may rather translate as a communal system of morality. he rejects any kind of them, which he illustrates through presenting a story (transl. by M. Fishbein):

وعرفت أني إن أصدّق منهم أحدًا بما لا أعلم أكن كالمصدّق المخدوع الذي ذهب يسرق حتّى جاء على ظهر بيت رجل من الأغنياء ليلًا ومعه أصحاب له فاستيقظ صاحب المنزل بوطئهم وأحسّ بهم
Full reference in Zotero Library

[I saw that if I agreed with any of them on something about which I had no knowledge, I would be like the credulous dupe who went to commit a burglary. He and his companions climbed onto the roof of a rich man’s house at night. The householder heard their footsteps, woke up, and sensed their presence (…)] Full reference in Zotero Library

For such a case of inserting stories, Werner Wolf coined the term mise en reflet as an elaboration of the mise-­en-abyme metaphor. In the typical mise en abyme, the narrator of an embedded story is an intradiegetic narrator—a character on the first level of the story. A narrative forms a closed unit. In the above example from Barzawayh’s account, however, narratives are not presented as told by characters but are loosely associated exempla (amthāl); in other words, they are often comparisons of wisdom sayings or insightful comments with particular situations. They frequently reflect and sometimes expand the meaning of a given maxime, a statement, or a description, and function therefore as a mise en reflet; that is, they mirror or duplicate the meaning of the preceding passage. In this case, Barzawayh compares himself and his situation, which he has described before to a simple-minded burglar. The notion of mise en série is an expansion of the idea, implying a continued use of similar narratives or other passages. This happens in Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s preface. In order to explain the purpose of the“Indian book” Kalīla and Dimna, the value of wisdom and practical ethics, he presents a couple of short parables on the value of knowledge and the necessity of its use, among other things.

Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, like Barzawayh, does not only stress the importance of knowledge again and again, he slightly modifies the dimensions of the meaning in each part. In a mise en série/mise en reflet—very much like in a mise en abyme—the later narrative part modifies the former. The relation between the textual parts, then, is not one of diegetic relatedness but similitude or analogy. Analogical reasoning, mentioned explicitly by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ in his preface, is another decisive tool in Islamic scholarship, notably Islamic law.¹⁷On qiyās, cf. Full reference in Zotero Library. Furthermore, building analogies is a key intellectual exercise with which new ethical interpretations of canonical texts, the Qur’an and the Hadith are generated. In the context of early literature, called adab in Arabic, which Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ contributed to, wisdom (ḥikma) must be read as the attainment of adab, a constant reinterpretation of given maximes and narratives and not a stable mode of collecting experience. Hence, true wisdom is about learning how to build associations and narrative connections; or, in other words, one continues to learn how to “frame” experiences and how experiences may “frame” existing knowledge. The framing category, informed by Wolf’s innovative concepts, can shed light on such textual chains of signification—mise en série—through storytelling, reciting, and arguing, and help us study the specific order of anthological works. Mise en série can be called framing because the insertion of tales and the moments of repetition are in their didactic function similar to such embeddings as we know them from Shahrazād; although in our case, the dramatising aspect of voice shifts is replaced by a more explicit, at times scholarly mode of using amthāl.

In concrete terms, the notion of a chain of signification can be found in the writing of the Andalusian polymath Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih (d. 940 AD), who titled and conceptualised his most famous work, a collection of maximes and wisdom sayings, corresponding lines of poetry and historical accounts, as a necklace. The work known as the Unique Necklace consists of twenty-five chapters that are headed by the mentioning of different pearls Full reference in Zotero Library. Each pearl stands for a different topic of instruction such as sultanic rule, science and knowledge, foodstuff, and women. The metaphor of the necklace signifies a chain of connected subjects. At least on the chapter level, one can observe multiple instances of mise en série, of building analogies and modifying meaning.¹⁸While Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih adopts the framing device of a mise en série at many places, he drops the framing device of the isnād, as he explains in his introduction Full reference in Zotero Library. While the above as an elaboration of the mise en abyme concept remains within intratextual framing dynamics, the following is an intertextual notion: the paratext. However, what a paratext is stands and falls with the reader’s decision.

Paratext

In his seminal work, Genette Full reference in Zotero Library speaks of a paratext as a presentation of a text, which is strictly speaking extradiegetic, not intra- but intertextual. Aforementioned chains of transmission (asānīd, sg. isnād), at first sight, do not fit Genette’s notion of paratext in the strict sense, which is strongly associated with the modern concept of authorship. According to Genette, authors compose their paratexts themselves or they are added to the text in the author’s sense (and thus do not deviate from his intention, Full reference in Zotero Library). Yet, in the extension of the Genetteian concept, other additions to the main work are also understood as such Full reference in Zotero Library. Hence, the decision as to whether chains of transmission do or do not belong to the actual body of the text remains one of interpretive perspective. Considering the mentioned example, chains of transmission usually appear as inherent parts of a text; without them, the overall text would not function as the authoritative communal product I have delineated. Therefore, reading asānīd as paratexts would emphasise their character of being outside the actual work, demarcating a clear boundary between diegetic or narrative information and additional, extradiegetical context. Nevertheless, the metaphor of framing would, at any rate, apply in this context of writing.

Wolf also proposes grasping paratexts with the notion of framing, as the latter concerns a central function of such additions, explanations, or introductions in a broad sense Full reference in Zotero Library. This framing, in contrast to the “frame tale”, is not generated via narrative relationality, but via the entire textual relational structure. Therefore, the consideration of paratexts as framings has recently found a productive application that relates both to the cognitive (see Full reference in Zotero Library) and material-visual level of textual production (see Full reference in Zotero Library; Full reference in Zotero Library).¹⁹See also earlier Full reference in Zotero Library.

In the context of manuscript culture, paratexts are known primarily as rather succinct additions which do not have to precede a narrative work; paratexts appear at the outer parts of the text, the text margins or the colophon where a copyist is mentioned. The margins do not tangentially affect the work or the core text but may influence the reading attitude. Simple reading notes do not only provide sociological-historical information about the copyist or the text’s circulation but may also offer insights into the reading practices associated with the work. Such framings are usually recognisable by the fact that they were written by a hand other than that of the initial writer or copyist. A certain type of appendix in Arabic called dhayl (sg.) is usually written by other scribes than the primary author. Dhayls use to conclude—historiographical—works that are regarded as unfinished and can act as a continuation or implicit commentary to the work Full reference in Zotero Library.

Before coming to paratexts functioning as a commentary and influencing the interpretation of an entire work, I shall first mention paratexts that guide the reader in providing informative additions. This happens in many copies of Kalīla and Dimna. More obviously than chains, the numerous prefaces in Kalīla and Dimna can be understood as paratexts, hence as framing.²⁰See on the framing quality of the different prefaces Full reference in Zotero Library. Some of them were obviously attached to it later. Kalīla-and-Dimna’s paratextual additions range up to seven in modern editions Full reference in Zotero Library. They couch what is known as an Indian wisdom book in various historical (or possibly pseudo-historical) contexts. The preface by the otherwise unknown ʿAlī b. Shāh al-Fārisī, for instance, ascribes a more concrete historical context to the framing dialogue between Baydabā and Dabshalīm, and leaves no room for ambiguity that Baydabā is the originator of the Indian book of Kalīla and Dimna.²¹The preface can be found in the edition carried out by Louis Cheikho Full reference in Zotero Library. Later copyists continued the tradition of reframing Kalīla and Dimna, by adding their own incipits or changing the order of the given prefaces Full reference in Zotero Library.

As to paratexts as interpretations of a given work, the Arabic translator Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, alludes both to the necessity to explain, in sum, the content of the “Indian book”, and to his interpretive stance, which is possibly different from previous readers Full reference in Zotero Library. Presenting a narrative work by adding a paratext to it—a commentary or an introduction—shows the proximity of framing to interpretation. In Wolf’s sense, paratexts can function as a mise en cadre, according to which the meaning of the enframed narrative is anticipated in the frame Full reference in Zotero Library.²²Full reference in Zotero Library conceptualises the frame stories in Kalīla and Dimna as paratexts (munāṣṣ).

It is, however, important to keep in mind that the following text parts do not have to correspond entirely to the specifications in the framing or to what can be defined as a paratext. In the Seven Viziers, this principle is followed, since in it we find narratives that are supposed to illustrate the “wiles of women”, which turn out to be sometimes narratives about poorly educated men guided by sexual desire. Notably, in the last story ‘The Man Who Investigated the Wiles of Women’, the storytelling vizier picks up the core theme of the book in a self-reflexive fashion. The story’s protagonist is a man who seeks to understand women’s ruses and writes a book about them. The man, however, fails miserably, as he gets seduced by a woman in a village who then accuses him of attempted rape in front of the village’s community. Interpreting the woman as mischievous is one way of reading such a tale in line with the overall set of stories told by the viziers. However, the story clearly exhibits the limitations of the (male) intellect, which, albeit investigating a topic, can never fully understand it. The narrative ends in a self-reflexive fashion: the man who investigates the wiles of women, in the end, gives up his research and burns his book Full reference in Zotero Library.

This example is by no means a typical paratexts, but rather an instance of classical framing. However, it stresses the importance of meaning-making. Framed and framing cannot solely be identified by a shift of voices. The notion of paratexts reminds us that the whole constitution of a given narrative has to be taken into account. The notions of mise en série and paratext, in principle, work in opposite directions. While in the mise en série the example nuances the meaning of the often previously given maxime, statement, or experience—hence, frames it—the paratext functions as a mise en cadre, it informs the understanding of what is in a work. The mise en série emphasises an intratextual relationality in which text parts possibly frame one another, whereas using “paratext” implies a statement about an entire work of art, an actual “inside”—or a main part—of a text, thereby, developing a clear ontological hierarchy.

The boundaries between traditional intratextual framing and paratextuality are fluid, most notably in a culture of manuscripts in which the status of certain textual parts is ambiguous and can change over time. In the case of Kalīla and Dimna, it is obvious that some of the many paratexts gained a more decisive framing function, as they were transmitted, rewritten, or adopted to several contexts again and again. The aforementioned introduction by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ and Barzawayh’s autobiography, though described as prefaces, became an integral part of the originally Indian book. In a sense, framed and framing parts have survived together. Hence, studying the Arabo-islamic tradition, the paratext is a category that needs to be defined in every new case. In fact, paratextuality emphasises the flexibility of what an actual book or work is and points to the notion of textual change and multi-layeredness in a pre-print context. In contrast to the classical framing concept, it is a category that moves beyond narrativity. The same counts for the concept of parergon, which, again, helps modify the meaning of what is inside and outside a given work.

Parergon

Paratexts can be described as additions to what is perceived as the actual work, and thus overlap with the concept of parergon, which translates as “accessory” or “supplement”. The concept of parergon draws from the conceptual repertoire of Immanuel Kant and has found its application to components of works of art Full reference in Zotero Library. It became known through Jacques Derrida’s recasting in his La vérité en peinture (Full reference in Zotero Library; engl. trans. Full reference in Zotero Library). Following Derrida, the hierarchical relationship of the work of art (ergon) to the frame (parergon) shall be reversed, since the frame/parergon, in his eyes, makes the work of art as such possible in the first place. The supplement or marginal part of a piece of art becomes, therefore, its central element.

More specifically, with the theory of the parergon, two relationships are considered, strictly speaking: that of the work to its frame, and that of the frame to the ‘outside of the work’ (hors d’œuvre, Full reference in Zotero Library). This bi-dimensional relationship between frame, work, and outside (e.g., the reader), can be applied to literary texts, as Simone Heller-Andrist Full reference in Zotero Library suggests, by describing the communicative dynamics between texts, including theatre plays and their audience. As a concept of framing, the parergon, like the paratext, can be related to various textual components. However, the focus here is on the level of communication with a non-textual dimension; because of this function, individual characters, individual voices, or textual or visual elements of various kinds can also be referred to as parerga.

In the examples already mentioned, the copyist’s individual traces, some changes to a particular manuscript, and an individual colophon or a renewed incipit could constitute a parergon. This may also apply to the mention of an anonymous narrator (rāwi) mentioned now and then, whose speaker’s role is usually not introduced. This reciting narrator, reminiscent of a reflection of an actual storytelling setting, such as a coffeehouse performance, occurs in the famous Galland manuscript of The Thousand and One Nights.²³In an anthological work of fiction from Islamic Andalucía titled The Epistle of Attendant Jinn and Whirling Demons (Risālat al-tawābiʿ wa-l-zawābiʿ) a silent, parergonal for that matter, narratee is addressed, which perhaps fosters the sense of imitating a real life narrative situation. This monologue introduces the narrative of multiple journeys to meet ancient poets and writers; see Full reference in Zotero Library. Moreover, in the context of Kalīla and Dimna, the embedded stories can be understood as a work in their own right, and the longer prologues of Baydabā as parergonal, since they are addressed to an almost silent king, involving the reader in a more direct manner than the protagonists of the embedded fables who encounter other, mostly animal, narratees. With this concept, the relational character of the frame, the dependence of a text on individual components, and the effect these have on the reader are foregrounded. In other words, a text is not (only) framed by particular textual units but rather through seeking concretely the audience’s attention via certain narrative elements or characters. Such parergonal elements add a new framing dimension. In the Nights, the narrative work is structured through the night-day cycle, which is essential to the entire work, subdividing individual chapters into units, providing an instrument for emphasising coherence and a ritualistic character, including the famous cliff hangers at dawn. The division of day and night, interrupting the narrative flow of the embedded story, always points back to the unknown primary narrator, underlining the text’s mediatedness. In addition to the frame tale character, the Night-and-day structure, in varying forms is itself parergonal, hence, a framing device.

Concluding remarks

The presented concepts of framing can be instrumental for better understanding the textual practice in premodern Arabic literature, as much as Arabic literary works can inform our understanding of what literary framing means. For example, dealing with the concepts of paratexts and parergon helps expand the notions of a text and work as flexible categories in order to fit the complexity of the collective production of manuscripts, its social use, and its transmission. On the other hand, examining early Islamic historiography and anthological works, two main implications for enhancing the significance of framing, which deserve more attention, are the communal character within and for narratives and how analogical thinking is related to framing, as a cognitive, and possibly also ethical activity. This being said, the framing with and of narratives is not merely a technique or strategy, but it is a basic function of narrative and texts, of teaching and learning, characterised by the fact that relations are established between at least two constituents belonging to different spheres and differently related to each other: ergon and parergon, text and paratext, maxime/ḥikma and exemplum/mathal, extradiagesis and intradiegesis, isnād and matn.

The possibilities presented in this article for expanding the notion of narrative framing are anything but exhaustive. To name just two examples, recent research has focused on the notion of framing in relation to translation. Translations act as rewritings that can provide a new interpretive frame in many ways Full reference in Zotero Library.²⁴See the insight from Mahmoud al-Zayed.With this in mind, the framing concept expands into a broad notion of intertextuality. In a similar vein, reframings, broadly speaking, deserve more attention, which is of notable relevance for frame tales themselves. For instance, The Seven Viziers, in their extant oldest versions in Arabic, are known as a story within the framing narrative A Hundred and One Nights. In this, the Viziers frame tale is not simply inserted but integrated into the book’s particular, paergonal, framing structure, which is a cognate book to the better known Thousand and One Nights. Moreover, oftentimes short narrative units are transposed from one larger frame tale tradition to another.²⁵See on this Full reference in Zotero Library.

Given these various notions, “framing narratives” denotes a methodological programme that can be used to look more closely at relationality in literature—between texts, within texts, and between communities and linguistic traditions—and its tendency to transcend geographic, linguistic, or communal restrictions. With its numerous rewritings of framing narratives and dozens of famous anthological and historical works, as well as its continuity over 1400 years, the Arabic tradition is a fertile ground for expanding and thinking further about the concept of narrative framing.