Revisiting Enlightenment Universalism: 18th-Century Lessons on Nonliteral Translations and Transcultural Storytelling

Abstract

A large number of transcultural fictions appeared in the 18th century, providing us with an important entry into discussing the task of comparative literature today. The 18th-century Oriental tales, stories authored by European writers that adapted from or modeled themselves after loose translations of folk tales from the East, practiced a kind of mental shapeshifting, blurring the boundaries between East and West. The same kind of cross-cultural identification is visible in many other literary narratives from the same period, indicative of a fluid, universalist politics regarding Europe’s relations with the Orient that requires reevaluation. 18th-century transcultural fictions suggest a few tactics for mediating between the necessity of establishing grounds of comparison and the need to draw distinctions. In its search for ways of breaking through the stronghold of cultural nationalism, comparative literature in its contemporary incarnation does well to rethink Enlightenment universalism as encoded in the literary landscape of 18th century Europe.