The Oriental tale in England in the eighteenth century

In Short

This scholarly monograph traces how genuine translations and lighthearted French pseudo-oriental tales migrated into eighteenth-century English literature. Examining everything from early printings of the Arabian Nights to the works of Addison, Goldsmith, Johnson, and Voltaire, Martha Pike Conant charts the genre's evolution through distinct narrative categories: imaginative, moralistic, philosophic, and satirical. The study reveals how these popular stories provided a creative playground for English authors, subtly undermining rigid neoclassicism and laying critical groundwork for the nineteenth-century Romantic revival. It endures as a foundational comparative study of cross-cultural influence and narrative form.

The Story

The study opens by establishing how genuine Eastern stories first reached Western readers in the early decades of the eighteenth century, primarily through Antoine Galland’s French translations of the Arabian Nights. These rich collections of magic, framed by Scheherezade’s desperate storytelling, immediately captured the public imagination. They introduced vivid details of Eastern customs, such as elaborate marriage ceremonies, grand funeral processions, and street-corner storytellers. However, they also provoked immediate critical tension between established classical standards of structural unity and the emerging craving for romantic adventure.

As the craze took hold, prolific French authors like Thomas Simon Gueullette began manufacturing pseudo-oriental tales to satisfy reader demand. These writers adapted the traditional frame-tale structure to deliver wild, loosely connected adventures—such as the Chinese Tales featuring the Mandarin Fum-Hoam, who narrates endless fantastical transmigrations to win a religious conversion. Writers soon realized that the genre’s exotic backdrops and flexible format offered an ideal vehicle for serious commentary, causing the oriental tale in England to divide into distinct literary channels.

In the hands of English essayists and moralists, the genre shifted from pure entertainment to ethical instruction. Poetic works like Thomas Parnell’s The Hermit used Eastern settings to explore divine providence, while writers like Richard Steele and Joseph Addison introduced moralized fables to wide audiences. Later authors took this trend to extreme lengths, producing works like Ridley’s Tales of the Genii, which concealed stern moral lessons under a thin veneer of incantations, crystal palaces, and terrifying sorcerers. Other adaptations turned absurdly didactic, including Dinarbas, an unauthorized sequel written to provide Dr. Samuel Johnson’s gloomy characters with permanent moral felicity.

Conant traces the highest reach of the genre in the philosophic tales of Voltaire and Samuel Johnson. While Voltaire’s Candide uses rapid, cynical movement across Europe to mock optimism, Johnson’s Rasselas strips away concrete scenery to construct a quiet, solemn inquiry into human happiness. Simultaneously, social critics recognized the oriental tale's power as a satirical tool. By adopting the persona of an outside observer, works like Montesquieu’s Persian Letters and Goldsmith’s The Citizen of the World turned the lens back onto Europe, using fictional foreign visitors to mock fashion, academic vanity, and political folly.

Ultimately, the study demonstrates that the eighteenth-century oriental tale was no mere literary fad. Though critics frequently mocked its absurdities, decorative excesses, and gothic flourishes, the genre served as an essential historical bridge, quietly nurturing the symbolic, imaginative, and emotional qualities that would blossom into full-scale English Romanticism.

How It Unfolds

The arrival of Eastern magic Translations of the Arabian Nights introduce Western readers to a world of episodic wonders, vivid customs, and frame-tale narratives, sparking immediate popular enthusiasm alongside classicist concern.

The rise of pseudo-oriental imitations Writers like Gueullette capitalize on the trend by churning out artificial collections like Chinese Tales, using improbable transmigrations and absurd adventures to stretch narrative fantasy to its limits.

Moralizing the exotic frame English essayists adapt the Eastern story into a delivery system for ethical lessons, replacing wild enchantments with allegories meant to teach conduct, resignation, and trust in divine providence.

The surge of romantic imagination Works such as Clara Reeve's translation of Charoba present darker, highly imaginative narratives of sea demons and magic, directly inspiring romantic poets like Gebir's author, Walter Savage Landor.

Philosophic peak and satirical reflection The genre reaches its intellectual height in Johnson's Rasselas and Voltaire's Zadig, while satirical works like Goldsmith's The Citizen of the World use foreign narrators to expose Western foolishness.

Legacy and the romantic prelude The widespread adoption of oriental themes, styles, and narrative structures gradually reshapes English literary taste, laying the artistic foundations for the nineteenth-century Romantic movement.

The People

Martha Pike Conant The author and literary scholar who frames the entire study. She seeks to chart the historical absorption of French and Eastern fictions into English literature, proving that these popular tales were vital to the rise of Romanticism.

Scheherezade The archetypal oriental story-teller whose life-or-death narrative urge drives the Arabian Nights. She sets the pattern of using suspenseful, open-ended tales to capture an audience's curiosity.

Mandarin Fum-Hoam The central narrator of Gueullette’s Chinese Tales. He tells endless stories while claiming to undergo absurd transmigrations—such as transforming into a flea, a dog, or a bat—all to secretly convert a princess and enforce a religious vow.

Queen Charoba The clever queen of Egypt in Clara Reeve’s translated romance. She uses subtlety, political maneuvers, and her nurse's dark sorcery to defeat the invading giant king Gebirus and protect her kingdom.

Rasselas The Abyssinian prince created by Dr. Samuel Johnson. He escapes the peaceful confines of the Happy Valley to search the wider world for true happiness, serving as the central figure in Johnson's solemn philosophic inquiry.

Rica and Usbek The Persian travelers in Montesquieu’s Persian Letters. Their foreign commentary exposes the hypocrisy, authorial vanity, and political absurdities of contemporary European society.

In Its Own Voice

“Everywhere—in the bazaars, by the wayside, in palace gardens or fishermen’s cottages, during the feasts or before the caliph’s tribunal, by night and by day—the teller of tales is sure of an interested audience.”

Conant highlights the pervasive, magnetic appeal of the traditional story-teller across Eastern culture.

“The form ethereal bursts upon his sight, / And moves in all the majesty of light.”

Parnell's poem captures the dramatic moment an enigmatic companion reveals his true identity as an angel sent to explain the mysterious ways of Providence.

“Far in the remote regions of Johnson’s imaginary Abyssinia and Egypt, events are of minor importance; the quiet, even advance of speculation concerning truth is Johnson’s chief interest.”

The monograph contrasts Samuel Johnson’s serene, generalized pursuit of philosophical truth with the violent, fast-paced satire of Voltaire.

What It's Really About

Beneath its historical overview of dragons, genii, and moralizing dervishes, Conant's work explores how literary traditions evolve through cross-cultural adoption. The book argues that English Romanticism did not erupt out of nowhere in the nineteenth century; rather, its emphasis on imagination, symbolism, and emotional depth was quietly cultivated decades earlier by the widespread popularity of translated Eastern tales.

Additionally, the monograph examines the fundamental tension between classicism and romanticism in eighteenth-century thought. By analyzing how English writers reshaped wild fantasy into moral essays, philosophic dialogues, and political satire, Conant shows how a culture adapts strange, foreign narrative forms to answer its own deep questions about ethics, human happiness, and societal vanity.

Why Read It Today

This monograph offers a clear, highly structured guide for readers interested in the history of the novel, comparative literature, or the origin of modern fantasy. Conant writes with an approachable academic clarity, avoiding overly dense jargon while providing thorough historical context. Her analysis reveals how everyday pop-culture crazes—such as the eighteenth-century obsession with pseudo-oriental decor, Chinese gardens, and exotic fables—can fundamentally reshape a nation's serious literary output.

Modern readers should be prepared for an academic treatise rather than a narrative work of fiction. Conant assumes a basic familiarity with major eighteenth-century figures like Johnson, Goldsmith, and Voltaire, and she includes detailed bibliographic references. Because the text was written in 1908, it occasionally reflects the period's generalized terminology regarding Eastern cultures. Nevertheless, the book remains a rewarding read for anyone curious about how foreign storytelling traditions cross borders, influence major authors, and quietly lay the groundwork for new artistic movements.