The Oriental tale in England in the eighteenth century
| Language | en |
|---|---|
| First published | 2026-01-29 |
| Rights | Public domain in the USA. |
| Gutenberg ID | #77806 |
Description
"The Oriental tale in England in the eighteenth century" by Martha Pike Conant is a scholarly monograph written in the early 20th century. It examines how oriental and pseudo-oriental narratives entered English prose fiction, largely through French translations and imitations, and how these works intersected with classicism and the emergent Romantic spirit. The study traces major strands—from imaginative marvel-tales to moralistic, philosophic, and satiric uses—highlighting touchstones like the Arabian Nights, Rasselas, The Citizen of the World, and Vathek. The opening of this study sets out its scope and method: a literary-historical survey of eighteenth-century English “oriental” fiction (chiefly prose), treated comparatively with French sources and without claims to expertise in Eastern languages. It defines “Oriental” geographically while excluding Hebrew literature for period-specific reasons, fixes the movement between the first English Arabian Nights and the late-century turn to learned translations, and sketches earlier European conduits for Eastern story (medieval collections, Renaissance travel and Turkish interest, seventeenth‑century romances and Marana’s Turkish Spy). It then contrasts the French craze launched by Galland—its imitations, satires, and conte moral—with the parallel English development, organized into imaginative, moralistic, philosophic, and satiric groups. Beginning Chapter I, the book analyzes the Arabian Nights: its Scheherazade frame, profuse magic, vivid everyday detail, loosely knit plotting, brisk incident, and thin characterization; then contrasts the more sentimental, flamboyantly fantastic Persian Tales and the satirical, plot-driven Turkish Tales (Sendebar). It surveys influential pseudo-translations (Serendip, Gueullette’s collections, Bignon’s Abdalla, and the New Arabian Nights), notes realistic travel-inflected pieces and pastoral “Oriental eclogues,” and shows how Charoba fed Landor’s Gebir. The section culminates in an assessment of Beckford’s Vathek—its dazzling terror in the Hall of Eblis, its mockery and exotic colour, moral retribution, and its debts to earlier French and pseudo-oriental models—before the narrative breaks off. (This is an automatically generated summary.)