The Oriental tale in England in the eighteenth century

"The Oriental tale in England in the eighteenth century" by Martha Pike Conant is a scholarly monograph in comparative literature written in the early 20th century. It traces how “oriental” and pseudo‑oriental fiction took shape in eighteenth‑century England—largely through French translations and imitations—within the wider shift from classicism toward Romanticism. The study highlights pivotal works such as the Arabian Nights, Johnson’s Rasselas, Goldsmith’s Citizen of the World, and Beckford’s Vathek, organizing the corpus into imaginative, moralistic, philosophic, and satiric strands. It offers an analytic survey supported by a chronological table, notes, and a substantial bibliography. The opening of this monograph lays out its aim and limits—eschewing source‑hunting in Eastern languages to focus on English reception and French mediation—defines “oriental,” and sets the period from the English emergence of the Arabian Nights to the appearance of Vathek, distinguishing this phase from later scholarly Orientalism. After sketching earlier European and English antecedents, it mirrors the French craze (Galland, Pétis de la Croix, Perrault) and proposes four English groupings. Chapter I then surveys the “imaginative” tales: it analyzes the Arabian Nights (frame‑tale, magical atmosphere, vivid incident, weak characterization), contrasts it with the more sentimental and fantastical Persian Tales (Thousand and One Days), and outlines the satiric Sendebar‑based Turkish Tales. It reviews a wave of pseudo‑translations (Three Princes of Serendip; Gueullette’s Chinese/Mogul/Tartarian collections), notes their extravagance and European borrowings, and shows how Bignon’s Abdalla and Gueullette’s imagery fed Beckford. It touches minor currents—lingering heroic romances, realistic travel/captivity pieces, and “oriental eclogues” by Collins, Chatterton, and Scott—then treats Charoba (the source of Landor’s Gebir). The section culminates in an extended reading of Vathek, praising the Hall of Eblis for its sustained terror and rich oriental color while faulting the book’s mockery, sensuality, and thin characterization, and situating it as a brilliant synthesis rather than an anomaly.