scholarly journals The Oriental Tale in England in the Eighteenth Century

1908 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha Pike Conant
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Oriental Tale

Prose Fiction and English Interest in the Near East, 1775–1825

PMLA ◽  
1938 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 827-836
Author(s):  
Wallace Cable Brown
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Near East ◽  
Prose Fiction ◽  
Minor Literature ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Developments ◽  
Arabian Nights ◽  
Travel Books ◽  
Oriental Tale

One of the most important literary manifestations of that direct interest in the Near East which travellers and travel books created, appears in English prose fiction of the early nineteenth century. The prose fiction thus supplements the Near East poetry of Byron, Moore, Southey, and numerous minor versifiers as well as the travel books themselves, which may be considered a kind of minor literature. Throughout the first half of the eighteenth century English readers had shown considerable interest in the Near East, particularly in the oriental tale; yet this interest was almost wholly indirect—the product of French accounts or French translations of the Arabian Nights. It was not until the last quarter of the century that new developments brought “the Orient much nearer to England than ever before … In letters, this modern spirit was first expressed by the increased number of travelers' accounts.”

Philosophical and Oriental Tales

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ros Ballaster
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
External Stimulus ◽  
Domestic Fiction ◽  
Alternative Means ◽  
Oriental Tale

This chapter discusses philosophical and oriental tales. The philosophical and oriental tale offer alternative means of exploring the same preoccupations as those that drive the more familiar realist and domestic fiction of the second half of the eighteenth century: a fiction that self-consciously explores relations between reader and text, between disciple and mentor, between past and present generations. Where philosophical and oriental tales differ from the domestic realist fictions is in exploring these relations on the level of form and plot rather than the level of character. It is not that character is insignificant in these tales but that it tends to demonstrate the universality of the human mind and its responses to external stimulus rather than to promote the belief in the plausibility or authenticity of persons through individualizing marks or impressions.

Mahometan/Muslim: The Chronotope of the Oriental Tale

2021 ◽  
pp. 21-52
Author(s):  
Maryam Wasif Khan
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Geographic Origin ◽  
Essential Element ◽  
Arabian Nights ◽  
Ancient Time ◽  
Antoine Galland ◽  
Oriental Tale ◽  
Literary Trend

This chapter argues that we read the literary trend for the oriental tale that overtook England in the early part of the eighteenth century as one that extended beyond the metropolis. An essential element of the oriental tale, whether Antoine Galland and Grub Street’s Arabian Nights’ Entertainments or Francois de la Croix’s Turkish Tales, is the chronotope of the Mahometan—the imagined counterpart of the Ottoman or Mughal Muslim kings—a that figure defies Enlightenment modalities of ancient time and geographic origin. A ubiquitous figure in the English oriental tale, the Mahometan is constructed as a homeless potentate, a traveling merchant, an itinerant dervish, and a wanderer.

Who Is a Muslim?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maryam Wasif Khan
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
The Core ◽  
The North ◽  
Urdu Literature ◽  
Oriental Tale

Who is a Muslim? Orientalism and Literary Populisms argues that modern Urdu literature, from its inception in colonial institutions such as Fort William College, Calcutta, to its dominant forms in contemporary Pakistan—popular novels, short stories, television serials—is formed around a question that is and historically has been at the core of early modern and modern Western literatures. The question—who is a Muslim—is predominant in eighteenth-century literary and scholarly orientalist texts, the English oriental tale chief amongst them, but takes on new and dangerous meanings once it travels to the North-Indian colony, and later to Pakistan. A literary-historical study spanning some three centuries, this book argues that the modern Urdu literary formation, far from secular or progressive, has been shaped as the authority designate on the intertwined questions of piety, national identity, and citizenship, first in colonial India and subsequently in contemporary Pakistan.

Novel and Empire

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markman Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Sentimental Novel ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Slave System ◽  
Creative Potential ◽  
Folk Beliefs ◽  
Oriental Tale ◽  
The Relationship

This essay examines novel’s relation with empire through the relationship between the form of the novel and the ideology of empire. It analyses the themes of colony and cross-cultural global encounters in popular prose subgenres of the eighteenth century, including the robinsonade, imitations of Crusoe’s island adventures, and the oriental tale, free imitations of the Islamic story collection. Although contemporary discourse on the British Empire argued that it was founded on ideas of liberty, commerce, and Christianity, the problem of slavery presented a powerful contradiction and growing controversy. Depictions of slavery in the sentimental novel advertised the asymmetrical violence endemic to the slave system, contributing to the emerging campaign for the abolition of the slave trade and, eventually, the emancipation of the slaves. Nonetheless, Gothic fictions found creative potential in the terrors of slavery and in folk beliefs derived from slave society, such as obeah and the zombie.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document