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54-471: Pikwik Pack centers around a group of four colorful creatures: Suki the hedgehog, Axel the raccoon, Hazel the cat and Tibor the hippo. The plot device for each episode revolves around a new package arriving at the Pikwik post office , which the quartet must deliver to a local resident in time, avoiding various obstacles. The package always includes a tag with three diamonds on it that have three different meanings;

108-479: A chance to dishonor him. Eventually the Vizier (Wazir), whose duty it is to provide them, cannot find any more virgins. Scheherazade , the vizier's daughter, offers herself as the next bride and her father reluctantly agrees. On the night of their marriage, Scheherazade begins to tell the king a tale, but does not end it. The king, curious about how the story ends, is thus forced to postpone her execution in order to hear

162-399: A crown, sword, or jewel. Often what drives the plot is the hero's need to find the object and use it for good, before the villain can use it for evil, or if the object has been broken by the villains, to retrieve each piece that must be gathered from each antagonist to restore it, or, if the object itself is evil, to destroy it. In some cases destroying the object will lead to the destruction of

216-533: A few hundred nights of storytelling, while others include 1001 or more. The bulk of the text is in prose , although verse is occasionally used for songs and riddles and to express heightened emotion. Most of the poems are single couplets or quatrains , although some are longer. Some of the stories commonly associated with the Arabian Nights —particularly " Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp " and " Ali Baba and

270-447: A group of travellers on an archaeological expedition across the Sahara to find an ancient lost city and attempt to recover a brass vessel that Solomon once used to trap a jinn , and, along the way, encounter a mummified queen, petrified inhabitants, life-like humanoid robots and automata , seductive marionettes dancing without strings, and a brass horseman robot who directs

324-451: A red diamond, which notes its recipient(s), a yellow diamond, which gives the package's intended delivery location, and a green diamond, indicating the delivery deadline or how the package should be delivered. In October 2019, Scholastic acquired rights to publish Pikwik Pack books. Playmates Toys was named as the global toy partner for Pikwik Pack in January 2019; the company released

378-470: A richly layered narrative texture. Versions differ, at least in detail, as to final endings (in some Scheherazade asks for a pardon, in some the king sees their children and decides not to execute his wife, in some other things happen that make the king distracted) but they all end with the king giving his wife a pardon and sparing her life. The narrator's standards for what constitutes a cliffhanger seem broader than in modern literature. While in many cases

432-463: A small group of historical figures from ninth-century Baghdad, including the caliph Harun al-Rashid (died 809), his vizier Jafar al-Barmaki (d. 803) and the licentious poet Abu Nuwas (d. c. 813). Another cluster is a body of stories from late medieval Cairo in which are mentioned persons and places that date to as late as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Two main Arabic manuscript traditions of

486-432: A story is cut off with the hero in danger of losing their life or another kind of deep trouble, in some parts of the full text Scheherazade stops her narration in the middle of an exposition of abstract philosophical principles or complex points of Islamic philosophy , and in one case during a detailed description of human anatomy according to Galen —and in all of these cases she turns out to be justified in her belief that

540-805: Is a collection of Middle Eastern folktales compiled in the Arabic language during the Islamic Golden Age . It is often known in English as the Arabian Nights , from the first English-language edition ( c.  1706–1721 ), which rendered the title as The Arabian Nights' Entertainment . The work was collected over many centuries by various authors, translators, and scholars across West Asia , Central Asia , South Asia , and North Africa . Some tales trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic , Sanskrit , Persian , and Mesopotamian literature. Most tales, however, were originally folk stories from

594-646: Is almost always the necklace and in spy stories it is almost always the papers." This contrasts with, for example, the One Ring from The Lord of the Rings , whose very nature is essential to the entire story. Not all film directors or scholars agree with Hitchcock's understanding of a MacGuffin. According to George Lucas, "The audience should care about it [the MacGuffin] almost as much as the dueling heroes and villains on-screen". Thus MacGuffins, according to Lucas, are important to

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648-560: Is notorious for using this plot device as a means to resolve a hopeless situation. For example, in Euripides' play Alcestis , the eponymous heroine agrees to give up her own life to Death in exchange for sparing the life of her husband, Admetus. In doing so, however, Admetus grows to regret his choice, realizing that the grief of her death would never leave him. Admetus is seized by guilt and sadness, wishing to keep her or die alongside her, but held by his obligations to raise their children. In

702-708: Is represented in the Nights by certain animal stories, which reflect influence from ancient Sanskrit fables . The influence of the Panchatantra and Baital Pachisi is particularly notable. It is possible that the influence of the Panchatantra is via a Sanskrit adaptation called the Tantropakhyana . Only fragments of the original Sanskrit form of the Tantropakhyana survive, but translations or adaptations exist in Tamil, Lao, Thai, and Old Javanese . The frame story follows

756-865: Is that the shoulder angel and devil emphasize the universal ideas of good and bad. This device was humorously used in The Emperor's New Groove (2000) and its sequel, Kronk's New Groove : the Kronk consults his shoulder angel and devil in order to determine whether to follow Yzma's orders or not. One Thousand and One Nights Features Types Types Features Clothing Genres Art music Folk Prose Islamic Poetry Genres Forms Arabic prosody National literatures of Arab States Concepts Texts Fictional Arab people South Arabian deities One Thousand and One Nights ( Arabic : أَلْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ , Alf Laylah wa-Laylah )

810-414: Is the murderer. A shoulder angel is a plot device used for either dramatic or humorous effect in animation and comic strips (and occasionally in live-action television). The angel represents conscience and is often accompanied by a shoulder devil representing temptation. They are handy for easily showing inner conflict of a character. Usually, the angel is depicted on or hovering near the right shoulder and

864-438: Is used to refer to a narrative ending in which an improbable event is used to resolve all problematic situations and bring the story to a (generally happy) conclusion. The Latin phrase " deus ex machina" has its origins in the conventions of Greek tragedy , and refers to situations in which a mechane (crane) was used to lower actors playing a god or gods onto the stage at the end of a play. The Greek tragedian Euripides

918-568: The Hezār Afsān has survived, so its exact relationship with the existing later Arabic versions remains a mystery. Apart from the Scheherazade frame story, several other tales have Persian origins, although it is unclear how they entered the collection. These stories include the cycle of "King Jali'ad and his Wazir Shimas" and "The Ten Wazirs or the History of King Azadbakht and his Son" (derived from

972-728: The Abbasid and Mamluk eras , while others, especially the frame story, are probably drawn from the Pahlavi Persian work Hezār Afsān ( Persian : هزار افسان , lit.   ' A Thousand Tales ' ), which in turn may be translations of older Indian texts . Common to all the editions of the Nights is the framing device of the story of the ruler Shahryar being narrated the tales by his wife Scheherazade , with one tale told over each night of storytelling. The stories proceed from this original tale; some are framed within other tales, while some are self-contained. Some editions contain only

1026-451: The Nights is extremely complex and modern scholars have made many attempts to untangle the story of how the collection as it currently exists came about. Robert Irwin summarises their findings: In the 1880s and 1890s a lot of work was done on the Nights by Zotenberg and others, in the course of which a consensus view of the history of the text emerged. Most scholars agreed that the Nights

1080-641: The Sahara to find a brass vessel that Solomon once used to trap a jinn . Several books in the Harry Potter series orient around a search for a special object. In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone , Harry believes there is a magical stone in Hogwarts with special powers. Lord Voldemort needs this stone to bring back his body, and Harry looks for the stone first to prevent Voldemort's return. The One Ring from J. R. R. Tolkien 's novel, The Lord of

1134-527: The 'Leiden edition' (1984). The Leiden Edition, prepared by Muhsin Mahdi , is the only critical edition of 1001 Nights to date, believed to be most stylistically faithful representation of medieval Arabic versions currently available. Texts of the Egyptian tradition emerge later and contain many more tales of much more varied content; a much larger number of originally independent tales have been incorporated into

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1188-658: The Baltic states and HRT 3 in Croatia. The series is also available on Youku , Tencent Video , and Mango TV in China, and on Blim TV in Mexico. The series also aired on Disney Junior in South Korea on April 7, 2021, until its closure. Plot device A plot device or plot mechanism is any technique in a narrative used to move the plot forward. A clichéd plot device may annoy

1242-519: The Caliph Harun al-Rashid . Also, perhaps from the tenth century onwards, previously independent sagas and story cycles were added to the compilation [...] Then, from the 13th century onwards, a further layer of stories was added in Syria and Egypt, many of these showing a preoccupation with sex, magic or low life. In the early modern period yet more stories were added to the Egyptian collections so as to swell

1296-546: The Forty Thieves "—were not part of the collection in the original Arabic versions, but were instead added to the collection by French translator Antoine Galland after he heard them from Syrian writer Hanna Diyab during the latter's visit to Paris . Other stories, such as " The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor ", had an independent existence before being added to the collection. The main frame story concerns Shahryār, whom

1350-540: The Nights are known: the Syrian and the Egyptian. The Syrian tradition is primarily represented by the earliest extensive manuscript of the Nights , a fourteenth- or fifteenth-century Syrian manuscript now known as the Galland Manuscript . It and surviving copies of it are much shorter and include fewer tales than the Egyptian tradition. It is represented in print by the so-called Calcutta I (1814–1818) and most notably by

1404-495: The Persian Hezār Afsān , explaining the frame story it employs: a bloodthirsty king kills off a succession of wives after their wedding night. Eventually one has the intelligence to save herself by telling him a story every evening, leaving each tale unfinished until the next night so that the king will delay her execution. However, according to al-Nadim, the book contains only 200 stories. He also writes disparagingly of

1458-422: The Rings has been labeled a plot device, since the quest to destroy it drives the entire plot of the novel. However, British Classical scholar Nick Lowe said: "Tolkien, on the whole, gets away with the trick by minimizing the arbitrariness of the ring's plot-power and putting more stress than his imitators on the way the ring's power moulds the character of its wielder and vice-versa." The term deus ex machina

1512-442: The Rings perform unexpected rescues, serving both as the eucatastrophic emissary and the agent of redemption. The first person known to have criticized the device was Aristotle in his Poetics , where he argued that the resolution of a plot must arise internally, following from previous action of the play. A frequently used plot mechanism in romances and dramas is the love triangle , a conflict where two characters compete for

1566-461: The affection of a third character. A MacGuffin is a term, popularized by film director Alfred Hitchcock , referring to a plot device wherein a character pursues an object, though the object's actual nature is not important to the story. Another object would work just as well if the characters treated it with the same importance. Regarding the MacGuffin, Alfred Hitchcock stated, "In crook stories it

1620-431: The agreement called for a pound of flesh, but no blood, so Shylock can collect only if he sheds no blood. The function of a red herring is to divert the audience's attention away from something significant. Red herrings are very common plot devices in mystery, horror, and crime stories. The typical example is in whodunits , in which facts are presented so that the audience is tricked into thinking that an innocent character

1674-471: The broad outline of a concubine telling stories in order to maintain the interest and favour of a king—although the basis of the collection of stories is from the Panchatantra —with its original Indian setting. The Panchatantra and various tales from Jatakas were first translated into Persian by Borzūya in 570 CE; they were later translated into Arabic by Ibn al-Muqaffa in 750 CE. The Arabic version

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1728-501: The bulk of the text sufficiently to bring its length up to the full 1,001 nights of storytelling promised by the book's title. Devices found in Sanskrit literature such as frame stories and animal fables are seen by some scholars as lying at the root of the conception of the Nights . The motif of the wise young woman who delays and finally removes an impending danger by telling stories has been traced back to Indian sources. Indian folklore

1782-423: The characters and plot. MacGuffins are sometimes referred to as plot coupons , especially if multiple ones are required, as the protagonist only needs to "collect enough plot coupons and trade them in for a dénouement ". The term was coined by Nick Lowe . A plot voucher , as defined by Nick Lowe, is an object given to a character (especially to the protagonist) before they encounter an obstacle that requires

1836-452: The collection over the centuries, most of them after the Galland manuscript was written, and were being included as late as in the 18th and 19th centuries. All extant substantial versions of both recensions share a small common core of tales: The texts of the Syrian recension do not contain much beside that core. It is debated which of the Arabic recensions is more "authentic" and closer to

1890-425: The collection's literary quality, observing that "it is truly a coarse book, without warmth in the telling". In the same century Al-Masudi also refers to the Hezār Afsān , saying the Arabic translation is called Alf Khurafa ('A Thousand Entertaining Tales'), but is generally known as Alf Layla ('A Thousand Nights'). He mentions the characters Shirāzd (Scheherazade) and Dināzād. No physical evidence of

1944-612: The conclusion. The next night, as soon as she finishes the tale, she begins another one, and the king, eager to hear the conclusion of that tale as well, postpones her execution once again. This goes on for one thousand and one nights, hence the name. The tales vary widely: they include historical tales, love stories, tragedies, comedies, poems, burlesques , and various forms of erotica . Numerous stories depict jinn , ghouls , ape people, sorcerers , magicians , and legendary places, which are often intermingled with real people and geography, not always rationally. Common protagonists include

1998-466: The devil or demon on the left, as the left side traditionally represents dishonesty or impurity (see Negative associations of left-handedness in language ). The idea of a shoulder angel and devil consulting the person in the center of the dispute is a tripartite view of the divided soul, that contributes to a rich tradition involving Plato's Chariot Allegory as well as id, ego and super-ego from Freudian psychoanalysis . The difference with other views

2052-452: The end, though, Heracles shows up and seizes Alcestis from Death, restoring her to life and freeing Admetus from the grief that consumed him. Another example of a deus ex machina is Gandalf in The Hobbit . With the help of seemingly limitless magical capabilities, he rescues the other main characters from all sorts of troubles. Likewise, the eagles in both The Hobbit and The Lord of

2106-496: The historical Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid , his Grand Vizier , Jafar al-Barmaki , and the famous poet Abu Nuwas , despite the fact that these figures lived some 200 years after the fall of the Sassanid Empire , in which the frame tale of Scheherazade is set. Sometimes a character in Scheherazade's tale will begin telling other characters a story of their own, and that story may have another one told within it, resulting in

2160-621: The king's curiosity about the sequel would buy her another day of life. A number of stories within the One Thousand and One Nights also feature science fiction elements. One example is "The Adventures of Bulukiya", where the protagonist Bulukiya's quest for the herb of immortality leads him to explore the seas, journey to the Garden of Eden and to Jahannam , and travel across the cosmos to different worlds much larger than his own world, anticipating elements of galactic science fiction; along

2214-522: The mid-20th century, the scholar Nabia Abbott found a document with a few lines of an Arabic work with the title The Book of the Tale of a Thousand Nights , dating from the ninth century. This is the earliest known surviving fragment of the Nights . The first reference to the Arabic version under its full title The One Thousand and One Nights appears in Cairo in the 12th century. Professor Dwight Reynolds describes

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2268-405: The narrator calls a " Sasanian king" ruling in "India and China". Shahryār is shocked to learn that his brother's wife is unfaithful. Discovering that his own wife's infidelity has been even more flagrant, he has her killed. In his bitterness and grief, he decides that all women are the same. Shahryār begins to marry a succession of virgins only to execute each one the next morning, before she has

2322-416: The original: the Egyptian ones have been modified more extensively and more recently, and scholars such as Muhsin Mahdi have suspected that this was caused in part by European demand for a "complete version"; but it appears that this type of modification has been common throughout the history of the collection, and independent tales have always been added to it. The first printed Arabic-language edition of

2376-447: The party towards the ancient city. "The Ebony Horse" features a robot in the form of a flying mechanical horse controlled using keys that could fly into outer space and towards the Sun, while the "Third Qalandar's Tale" also features a robot in the form of an uncanny boatman . "The City of Brass" and "The Ebony Horse" can be considered early examples of proto-science fiction. The history of

2430-417: The reader and a contrived or arbitrary device may confuse the reader, causing a loss of the suspension of disbelief . However, a well-crafted plot device, or one that emerges naturally from the setting or characters of the story, may be entirely accepted, or may even be unnoticed by the audience. Many stories, especially in the fantasy genre, feature an object or objects with some great magical power, such as

2484-1252: The series airs on Channel 5 since November 3, 2021, as a part of the Okto on 5 programming block. The series was also added to Hulu on May 4, 2021, and includes a secondary Spanish dub. In Canada, it is available on Amazon Prime Video , as a part of the StackTV package. Pikwik Pack has also been distributed to countries around the world. The series is currently airing on MiniMini+ in Poland, Canal Panda in Portugal and Spain, Yle TV2 in Finland, Rai Yoyo in Italy, Gloobinho in Brazil, Hop! Channel in Israel, TG4 in Ireland, EBC Yoyo in Taiwan, Carousel , O! and Shayan TV in Russia, Super RTL in Germany, KidZone Mini in

2538-504: The seventh-century Persian Bakhtiyārnāma ). In the 1950s, the Iraqi scholar Safa Khulusi suggested (on internal rather than historical evidence) that the Persian writer Ibn al-Muqaffa' was responsible for the first Arabic translation of the frame story and some of the Persian stories later incorporated into the Nights. This would place genesis of the collection in the eighth century. In

2592-434: The subsequent transformations of the Arabic version: Some of the earlier Persian tales may have survived within the Arabic tradition altered such that Arabic Muslim names and new locations were substituted for pre-Islamic Persian ones, but it is also clear that whole cycles of Arabic tales were eventually added to the collection and apparently replaced most of the Persian materials. One such cycle of Arabic tales centres around

2646-600: The toys around the world excluding China. Pikwik Pack first premiered on Disney Junior in United States on November 7, 2020. In Canada, it began airing on Treehouse TV since December 26, 2020, and on Disney Junior since January 14, 2022; it is also airing on Télétoon and La Chaîne Disney in French-speaking Canada. Since September 1, 2021, the series airs on Tiny Pop in the United Kingdom. In Singapore,

2700-467: The use of the object. An example of a plot voucher is a gift received by a character, which later impedes a deadly bullet. A quibble is based on an argument that an agreement's intended meaning holds no legal value and that only the exact, literal words agreed on apply. For example, William Shakespeare used a quibble in The Merchant of Venice : Portia saves Antonio in a court of law by pointing out that

2754-812: The villain. In the Indiana Jones film series, each film portrays Jones on the hunt for a mystical artifact. In Raiders of the Lost Ark , he is trying to retrieve the Ark of the Covenant ; in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade , Jones is on a search for the Holy Grail . This plot device is also used in the Arabian Nights tale of " The City of Brass ," in which a group of travelers on an archaeological expedition journeys across

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2808-707: The way, he encounters societies of jinns , mermaids , talking serpents , talking trees , and other forms of life. In another Arabian Nights tale, the protagonist Abdullah the Fisherman gains the ability to breathe underwater and discovers an underwater submarine society that is portrayed as an inverted reflection of society on land, in that the underwater society follows a form of primitive communism where concepts like money and clothing do not exist. Other Arabian Nights tales deal with lost ancient technologies, advanced ancient civilizations that went astray, and catastrophes which overwhelmed them. "The City of Brass" features

2862-515: Was a composite work and that the earliest tales in it came from India and Persia. At some time, probably in the early eighth century, these tales were translated into Arabic under the title Alf Layla , or 'The Thousand Nights'. This collection then formed the basis of The Thousand and One Nights . The original core of stories was quite small. Then, in Iraq in the ninth or tenth century, this original core had Arab stories added to it—among them some tales about

2916-574: Was translated into several languages, including Syriac, Greek, Hebrew and Spanish. The earliest mentions of the Nights refer to it as an Arabic translation from a Persian book, Hezār Afsān (also known as Afsaneh or Afsana ), meaning 'The Thousand Stories'. In the tenth century, Ibn al-Nadim compiled a catalogue of books (the " Fihrist ") in Baghdad. He noted that the Sassanid kings of Iran enjoyed "evening tales and fables". Al-Nadim then writes about

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