Oriental Fairy Tale and its Influence on European Literature: Intertextuality of Texts and Translations

 From times immemorial, the East provided Europe with incense and spices, as well as with its legends and beliefs, symbols and fairy tales. These tales familiarized Europeans with exotic and previously unknown world of peri and jinns, merchants of opulent Eastern bazaars, maddening beauties and young men performing acts of bravery. Europeans were fascinating with the stories that combined invention and fantasies with reality, a kaleidoscope of alien morals and traditions, homilies and didacticism. Elements of the Oriental tales being retold and reinterpreted influenced the European culture. Multitudes of translations and imitations of the Oriental tales appeared in the European literature. This paper considers intertextuality of the Oriental fairy tale, expands the scope and content of the concept used in the practical studies of literary phenomena; justifications are given for significance of intertextual links in the process of reinterpretation and renewal of the Oriental prose texts, giving rise to new artistic meanings. The text of the fairy tales and their translations are seen as an intertext determined by a possibility of representing translation units as intertextual