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010 _a08003276
040 _aUtSlPG
041 7 _aen
_2iso639-1
050 4 _aPR
100 1 _aConant, Martha Pike,
_d1868-1930
245 1 4 _aThe Oriental tale in England in the eighteenth century
264 1 _aSalt Lake City, UT :
_bProject Gutenberg,
_c2026
300 _a1 online resource :
_bmultiple file formats
336 _atext
_btxt
_2rdacontent
337 _acomputer
_bc
_2rdamedia
338 _aonline resource
_bcr
_2rdacarrier
490 1 _aColumbia University studies in comparative literature
500 _aRelease date is 2026-01-29
508 _aRichard Tonsing, Tim Lindell, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
520 _a"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. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
534 _pOriginally published:
_cNew York: Columbia University Press, 1908
653 _aEnglish fiction -- 18th century -- History and criticism
653 _aEnglish literature -- Asian influences
653 _aOrient -- In literature
653 _aOrientalism in literature
653 _aOriental literature -- Translations into English -- History and criticism
830 0 _aColumbia University studies in comparative literature
856 4 _uhttps://archive.org/details/orientaltaleinen00conauoft/page/n5/mode/2up
856 4 0 _uhttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77806
999 _c118526
_d118526