Fables of the East: Selected Tales 1662-1785

286 Pages·2005·1.02 MB·English

by  Ros Ballaster

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ables of
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Selected Tales
1662–1785
Editedby
Ros Ballaster
1
1
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Textual Note vii
Introduction 1
1. The Framed Sequence 13
From The Arabian Nights Entertainments,
‘translated’ by Antoine Galland (1704–1715) 15
‘The Fable of the Mouse, that was Changed into a
Little Girl’ from The Fables of Pilpay, translated by
Joseph Harris (1699) 43
‘The History of Commladeve’ from Tales, from the
Inatulla of Delhi, translated by Alexander Dow (1768) 49
‘The Adventures of Urad’ from James Ridley,
Tales of the Genii (1764) 71
2. The Pseudo-Oriental Tale 101
‘The History of the Christian Eunuch’ from Eliza
Haywood, Philidore and Placentia (1727) 103
Joseph Addison, Spectator, no. 512, 17 October 1712 120
Horace Walpole, ‘Mi Li. A Chinese Fairy Tale’ from
Hieroglyphic Tales (1785) 126
v
Contents
3. Travels and History 139
‘A Voyage to Kachemire, the Paradise of Indostan’ from
Franc¸ois Bernier, A Continuation of the Memoires of
Monsieur Bernier, translated by Henry Oldenburg (1672) 141
From The General History of the Mogol Empire,
compiled by Franc¸ois Catrou from the memoirs of
Niccolo Manucci (1709) 175
From Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Letters of the
Right Honourable Lady M——y W——y M——e (1763) 191
4. Letter Fictions 205
From Giovanni Paolo Marana, The Eight Volumes of
Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy, translated by William
Bradshaw (1687–1694) 207
From Charles Secondat de Montesquieu, Persian Letters,
translated by Charles Ozell (1722) 239
From Oliver Goldsmith, The Citizen of the World (1762) 258
Glossary 269
vi
extual ote
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Copy-texts are from first editions where possible. Otherwise, I have
usedlatereditionsascloseaspossibletothefirst.Eachtextisprefaced
by an introduction giving the author, date of first publication, and
edition used, with relevant context, information about the text and
its author and/or translator, and explanation of its significance. The
editor’s notes concentrate on explaining references to contemporary
historyandintertextualconnectionswithotherwritingsaboutoriental
cultures.
All texts have been corrected to use speech marks (where often
there are none in the original). I have not modernized spelling and
punctuation except where it is needed for sense, and usually on the
authority of a later edition. Otherwise, I have made no substantive
changes to the original texts and hence individual emendations have
not been recorded.
Since the critical work that accompanies this anthology, Fabulous
Orients: Fictions of the East in England 1662–1785 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2005), provides a full bibliography, I have simply
given full references to all works cited in introductions or footnotes.
Readersshouldconsulttheglossaryatthebackwhichoffersexplana-
tions of oriental terms, general and geographical.
vii
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ntroduction
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The trope of the Orient in eighteenth-century England is ‘back-
wardness’. To travel to oriental territories, to consume oriental nar-
rative, is to travel ‘backward’ in time (to retrace ancient history), in
space(fromthe‘new’tothe‘old’world),andinidentity(fromcontract
and civility to despotism). Accordingly, the kind of story associated
with the Orient is the most elementary and ancient form: the fable.
Thus, James Beattie commences his 1780 essay, ‘On Fable and
Romance’, with ‘General remarks on Ancient and Oriental Prose
Fable’ as though the two terms were equivalent:
itmaybepropertoobserve,thattheOrientalnationshavelongbeenfamous
forfabulousnarrative.TheindolencepeculiartothegenialclimatesofAsia,
andtheluxuriouslifewhichthekingsandothergreatmen,ofthosecountries,
leadintheirseraglios,havemadethemseekforthissortofamusement,and
setahighvalueuponit.WhenanEasternprincehappenstobeidle,ashe
commonlyis,andatalossforexpedientstokillthetime,hecommandshis
Grand Visir, or his favourite, to tell him stories. Being ignorant, and con-
sequently credulous; having no passion for moral improvement, and little
knowlegeofnature;hedoesnotdesire,thattheyshouldbeprobable,orofan
instructivetendency:itisenoughiftheybeastonishing.Andhenceitis,no
doubt,thatthoseorientaltalesaresoextravagant.Everythingiscarriedonby
inchantmentandprodigy;byfairies,genii,anddemons,andwoodenhorses,
which,onturningapeg,flythroughtheairwithinconceivableswiftness.1
BeattiegoesontoidentifyAntoineGalland’searlyeighteenth-century
‘translation’, known in England as The Arabian Nights Entertain-
ments, as the most familiar example of oriental fable, and defends
it, despite its incredibility, on the grounds that ‘It conveys a pretty
1 JamesBeattie,‘OnFableandRomance’,inDissertations,MoralandCritical,inThe
WorksofJamesBeattie,ed.RogerJ.Robinson(London:Routledge/Thoemmes,1996),
505–74,508–9.
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