ABSTRACT
The recycling of Tipu's nephrite within Fonthill Abbey cannot be compared to the reuse of Tipu's tiger the automaton that attracted droves in Regency London. To indulge in recycling partakes of the joke, the send-up, the farce, but also mischief as a good dose of impertinence is needed to outdo what is given and surpass it. In the 1780s, recycling the Nights thus meant keeping the interest going. The most obvious or expected form of recycling would have been to supervise a translation into English for his fellow countrymen. In recycling Orientalia, Beckford found a repression-free terrain and identified with figures invested with strong despotic authority such as the powerful Caliph "Wathek" with his petrifying gaze. Looking at the various ways recycling is processed, several paradigms have been identified: horticultural, linguistic, and dramatic. Recycling is a negotiation between a revivalist, historicist streak turned backwards and a cult of freshness, newness and youth turned forward.
