“Aladdin” as a model of masculinity in nineteenth-century children’s literature

“Aladdin” is one of the most popular “fairy tales” and one of the rare stories with a boy protagonist that remains well known. Yet the tale has an unusual history, in that it did not originate in One Thousand and One Nights, as is commonly assumed, but was composed by a French translator based on the oral performance of a Syrian storyteller. The lengthy story of “Aladdin” added to the Nights by Antoine Galland has a distinct publication history as it was adapted for children in the nineteenth century, as compared with many European tales that were widely read in anthologies attributed to Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, and Hans Christian Andersen. This article examines how “Aladdin” was adapted for English-speaking children in second half of the nineteenth century through consideration of variants published within fairy-tale anthologies and individual toy books. It examines how “Aladdin” is progressively revised to model an ideal version of masculinity for nineteenth-century and early-twentieth century boy readers, through the remaking of the lazy boy protagonist as a fairy-tale hero.