ABSTRACT
This chapter defines the oriental tale, tracing its development as an Atlantic discourse from even before the eighteenth century to its becoming a stable feature of American periodicals by that century’s end. It explores how the tales’ functions intersected with the interests of early American periodicals, offering readers something of a “virtual salon” for discussing the major issues of the day, as well as an arena for testing new ideas of morality and empirical truth through a morally inflected, and usually plainly allegorical, narrative. The chapter revises sharply downward the estimated number of such tales that might be attributed to American authors, establishing the genre as a truly Atlantic phenomenon, one through which Americans sought to be part of a global community. It then examines a number of possibly American-penned oriental tales from 1727 to 1807, the heyday of Americans’ first period of interest in the genre, as expressing concerns about recent developments across a wide spectrum of fields, from theology to economics. After around 1807, the chapter argues, the composition of such tales began to shift quite dramatically, from philosophical exemplars and heuristic texts to more adventurous and romantic stories, meant as objects for mere entertainment.
