Mahometan/Muslim: The Chronotope of the Oriental Tale

Abstract

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.