Download or read book The Arabian Epic: Volume 1, Introduction written by M. C. Lyons and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-06-17 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The hero cycles of Arabic belong to the literary tradition of The Arabian Nights and can be seen as the popular epics of their civilisation. Published in three volumes, the first introduces the background to the cycles, while the second analyses their contents and literary formulae. The epitomes surveyed in the final volume provide further insight into their literary nuances.