1
00:00:00,390 --> 00:00:08,580
So my name is Ros Ballaster, I'm professor of 18th century studies in English literature at Oxford.

2
00:00:08,580 --> 00:00:17,280
I started becoming interested in the Oriental tale in the 18th century because I've been reading a very famous book by Edward Said,

3
00:00:17,280 --> 00:00:24,420
published in the late 1970s called Orientalism, which has been very influential in historical and literary studies and cultural studies.

4
00:00:24,420 --> 00:00:31,860
And it makes the argument that the Orient is constructed as other historically through time as a kind of alien and

5
00:00:31,860 --> 00:00:40,980
dangerous force by Western writers for resistance and critique and to imagine their own superiority to the east.

6
00:00:40,980 --> 00:00:47,250
But when you look at early modern accounts, sort of 17th, 18th century representations of the East,

7
00:00:47,250 --> 00:00:51,810
there's a much more positive version of these that you encounter as a place of

8
00:00:51,810 --> 00:00:58,860
kind of wisdom of ancientness an alternative to Greek and Roman Western origins.

9
00:00:58,860 --> 00:01:04,740
Chinese Confucianism is celebrated as a sort of ancient and with wise religion,

10
00:01:04,740 --> 00:01:12,720
and Islam itself is often paralleled, in fact, to Christianity and Muhammad to to to Christ.

11
00:01:12,720 --> 00:01:20,460
So I became interested in sort of thinking about why this is and tracing that enthusiasm for this and also perhaps thinking about

12
00:01:20,460 --> 00:01:26,580
the East less as something that's constructed this opposite to the West as something that's constructed is analogous to the West,

13
00:01:26,580 --> 00:01:34,650
something that you could say you could compare to Western culture or see as being at a very often in the 18th century,

14
00:01:34,650 --> 00:01:42,720
it's imagined as kind of a sort of earlier or return to an ancient and classical world that you can encounter by travelling east.

15
00:01:42,720 --> 00:01:48,530
So this coincides with travellers accounts of the east, but also the rise of the novel.

16
00:01:48,530 --> 00:01:53,940
So I'm particularly interested in how the novel comes into being in the 18th and 17th century.

17
00:01:53,940 --> 00:01:57,690
We tend to think now of the novel as a sort of central literary form.

18
00:01:57,690 --> 00:02:03,810
But in the 18th century, it's a very new form, a kind of all that the word word means is novel.

19
00:02:03,810 --> 00:02:10,680
It means new and central. I thought to the emergence of the novel was this enthusiasm for the Oriental tail,

20
00:02:10,680 --> 00:02:17,040
the Arabian Nights, the first translated in the first two decades of the 18th century into English.

21
00:02:17,040 --> 00:02:27,900
And they're immensely popular. The serialised in periodicals, you hear them echoing different stories echo through the novels of the 18th century.

22
00:02:27,900 --> 00:02:32,820
Writers are particularly fascinated by them. Samuel Taylor Coleridge at the end of the 18th century, early 19th centuries,

23
00:02:32,820 --> 00:02:39,300
talks about his mesmeric kind of attraction to the Arabian Nights as a book and how he immersed himself in it.

24
00:02:39,300 --> 00:02:42,810
And after that, after the first two decades of the 18th century,

25
00:02:42,810 --> 00:02:50,970
when we see this translation as Arabian Nights from French into English, it's a Frenchman who first translates them.

26
00:02:50,970 --> 00:03:03,550
You see English writers starting to imitate the Arabian Nights and tell Eastern tales like Eastern tales as well alongside those travel accounts.

27
00:03:03,550 --> 00:03:11,490
So all the same concerns being expressed in this Oriental fiction as in domestic fiction at the time.

28
00:03:11,490 --> 00:03:23,580
Yes, well, I suppose I think what I think happens is that that Enlightenment project to talk about sort of free and rational mind and its

29
00:03:23,580 --> 00:03:34,890
play across geographical and temporal spaces as it's as it's immense liberty that that can be expressed in the Oriental tale.

30
00:03:34,890 --> 00:03:42,870
So the Oriental Oriental tales often involve characters who, for instance, chans migrate or transform.

31
00:03:42,870 --> 00:03:50,100
So the Buddhist tradition of rebirth is imagined as a kind of narrative device where you can

32
00:03:50,100 --> 00:03:56,640
tell stories about people reincarnating in different forms from animal to human species.

33
00:03:56,640 --> 00:04:05,970
There's also, of course, the attraction, the immense attraction of the Oriental fable. Aesop's tales are translated in numerous forms.

34
00:04:05,970 --> 00:04:13,020
His fables. In the early 18th century, gay John Gay is perhaps the most famous translator of the Mathabane also has.

35
00:04:13,020 --> 00:04:19,560
In the late 17th century theologian of Aesop's Fables, Aesop is recognised as a sort of Oriental informant.

36
00:04:19,560 --> 00:04:29,340
This image of the wise Oriental storyteller who corrects corruption in government,

37
00:04:29,340 --> 00:04:37,290
introduces social reform, or trains up a young prince to take his responsibilities seriously.

38
00:04:37,290 --> 00:04:41,970
That comes from a long tradition of Oriental stories, the Tanesha,

39
00:04:41,970 --> 00:04:50,940
the Indians tell sequences translated in the mid 17th century into Italian and then into English, something called the fables of Dony, very popular.

40
00:04:50,940 --> 00:04:57,300
So this idea of sort of short tales that deliver morals and the play of the mind, as I said,

41
00:04:57,300 --> 00:05:04,020
across different territories, coincides with the enthusiasm for travel writing as well,

42
00:05:04,020 --> 00:05:13,200
of course, and collections of travel literature as so travel literature obviously is quite popular in India as well, which is sort of now.

43
00:05:13,200 --> 00:05:20,040
Would you say that that Lurdes that you've described in 18th century fiction is is the same as that Oriental Interpol that you get later?

44
00:05:20,040 --> 00:05:27,630
Well, I think Edward Syeed is right to say that something happens at the end of the 18th, early 19th century.

45
00:05:27,630 --> 00:05:34,590
Obviously, historically, what happens is Western Empire starts to really gain a foothold.

46
00:05:34,590 --> 00:05:47,370
So most obviously for England, the acquisition of India in the late 18th century means that the English and the British are starting to

47
00:05:47,370 --> 00:05:54,030
imagine themselves as territorial governors rather than traders in relationship to wealthy Eastern states.

48
00:05:54,030 --> 00:06:04,080
And they're gaining access to that wealth. So I think Victorian 19th century writing does have a less open attitude to the east,

49
00:06:04,080 --> 00:06:16,060
is more inclined to see it as a territory that needs to be controlled and managed, is more inclined to represent native cultures, Hinduism and.

50
00:06:16,060 --> 00:06:23,090
And and sort of popular Islam as something that's dangerous force for insurrection that needs to be controlled and managed.

51
00:06:23,090 --> 00:06:30,700
So I think you get a shift towards that. What Saïd sees as the Orient, his other and away from the orienteers analogue.

52
00:06:30,700 --> 00:06:35,410
And you can see why that would happen. If you want to trade with a culture, you need to understand it.

53
00:06:35,410 --> 00:06:40,220
If you want to dominate and govern it, it might not be that you need to understand it.

54
00:06:40,220 --> 00:06:44,680
You need to contain it and control it and vindicate your own actions,

55
00:06:44,680 --> 00:06:49,930
particularly as opposed to kind of defence of Christianity and attempt to spread

56
00:06:49,930 --> 00:06:56,560
Christianity and in those cultures that that European states are now governing in the east.

57
00:06:56,560 --> 00:07:00,100
So I think there is a definite shift.

58
00:07:00,100 --> 00:07:08,560
That said, the sort of 18th century fascination with the exoticism of the East is you can still hear that chiming.

59
00:07:08,560 --> 00:07:17,920
So some wonderful 19th century texts. There's a there's a beautiful sequence of poems by Tom Moore called La Rook,

60
00:07:17,920 --> 00:07:23,230
which is a great sort of poetic epic version of the Arabian Nights with multiple tales.

61
00:07:23,230 --> 00:07:30,910
Tom was a great friend of Byron. Byron's Oriental Tales from the Early 18th Century is a series of epic.

62
00:07:30,910 --> 00:07:38,590
So it's a Oriental poems which are full of sort of sturm und drang and excitement.

63
00:07:38,590 --> 00:07:47,230
And Byron himself, of course, his travels through Albania. And it's very his imagination is absolutely gripped by his experiences in the east.

64
00:07:47,230 --> 00:07:49,300
So it's not that there aren't writings like that,

65
00:07:49,300 --> 00:07:58,600
but I think the shift generally is much more towards a less open, less enthusiastic representation of the East.

66
00:07:58,600 --> 00:08:04,960
SP2 -And Samuel Johnson, of course, was in the forefront, at the forefront of this movement in some ways.

67
00:08:04,960 --> 00:08:09,040
And why should we study him as a writer of Oriental fiction?

68
00:08:09,040 --> 00:08:12,400
OK, so Samuel Johnson publishes this little book.

69
00:08:12,400 --> 00:08:18,970
For those of if anyone knows anything about Samuel Johnson, they probably think of him as a writer of great copiousness,

70
00:08:18,970 --> 00:08:27,250
editor of the dictionary, one of the first pictures of the English language in the mid 18th century, accounts of the lives of the poets.

71
00:08:27,250 --> 00:08:31,780
But this is what he calls his little story book. And it's 49 short chapters.

72
00:08:31,780 --> 00:08:41,860
It's a lovely it's a small little book. He published it in seventeen fifty nine and he wrote it a great speed in the evenings of January 1759,

73
00:08:41,860 --> 00:08:47,920
because his mother was seriously ill and then died and he had to find the costs to find something to pay for her funeral.

74
00:08:47,920 --> 00:08:52,240
So he did write it as a kind of commercial endeavour.

75
00:08:52,240 --> 00:09:01,660
And it's a short tale about a prince called Rasselas from Abyssinia, which is now modern day Ethiopia,

76
00:09:01,660 --> 00:09:07,780
who is brought up in the Happy Valley, his the fourth son of an absent king.

77
00:09:07,780 --> 00:09:12,280
And he starts to long to escape this place where every luxury is given to him.

78
00:09:12,280 --> 00:09:15,430
But in a way, the mind is contained and controlled.

79
00:09:15,430 --> 00:09:21,310
Sometimes I think Johnson only chose the words or the location of Abyssinia because it contains in it that word,

80
00:09:21,310 --> 00:09:27,400
Abis, and the idea that his mind is enclosed in an abyss and he needs to escape from the happy valley,

81
00:09:27,400 --> 00:09:33,550
which he finally manages to do, takes him a long time, takes him months and months of imagining his freedom before he gets away.

82
00:09:33,550 --> 00:09:46,330
And he leaves in the company of his sister, Niscayah, and her maid servant, Piqua, and with a wise sage poet character called Imlach.

83
00:09:46,330 --> 00:09:54,220
And they travel to Cairo and Egypt and there they in the keyer and Rasselas brother and sister set about trying to identify what it is

84
00:09:54,220 --> 00:09:59,890
that brings happiness in the world and what they discover through their encounters with various different people who appear to be happy.

85
00:09:59,890 --> 00:10:06,240
And then they discover they aren't, is that happiness is not obtainable in the world and that even when you seem happy, it's not actually there.

86
00:10:06,240 --> 00:10:11,200
And you have to come to terms with disappointment, disillusion, grief, loss.

87
00:10:11,200 --> 00:10:15,220
And most of the novel, it's only 49 short chapters, as I said,

88
00:10:15,220 --> 00:10:19,420
consists of little conversations, reported conversations between Rasselas and the Keyer.

89
00:10:19,420 --> 00:10:27,820
There's also a wonderful little insect tale about Pecola, the maid servant who's abducted by Arabs when they go to visit the pyramids and the keyer.

90
00:10:27,820 --> 00:10:33,520
Her mistress falls into a terrible decline, missing her, and they finally managed to ransom her back.

91
00:10:33,520 --> 00:10:38,560
Now, one of the reasons we might want to read this short fiction now is if you think about the

92
00:10:38,560 --> 00:10:46,630
current political world climate and think about the centrality of Egypt to the Arab Spring,

93
00:10:46,630 --> 00:10:56,740
to debates about what's going on in the east. In that novel, Johnson clearly identifies Egypt as, if you like, the centre of Oriental culture.

94
00:10:56,740 --> 00:11:00,250
This is where Rasselas and Nicoya go to get their information.

95
00:11:00,250 --> 00:11:08,350
If we think about them as sort of surrogates for ourselves and they find they're a place of kind of great wisdom and diversity,

96
00:11:08,350 --> 00:11:15,730
but also it's a space where they come to recognise that we all have.

97
00:11:15,730 --> 00:11:20,000
Belonging to or an attraction to despotism and attraction to tyranny,

98
00:11:20,000 --> 00:11:25,340
we all want to see our own wishes brought about so so and they have to learn to contain

99
00:11:25,340 --> 00:11:32,090
and to and kerb that despotism and recognise that we can't all have our wishes met.

100
00:11:32,090 --> 00:11:37,970
So one way in which the EU is functioning is as a kind of parable for the West about the sort of

101
00:11:37,970 --> 00:11:44,270
complain that the East consists of of of people who can only recognise despotism and tyranny.

102
00:11:44,270 --> 00:11:50,720
We can still hear that, too, in our current news reporting about Syria, about Egypt,

103
00:11:50,720 --> 00:11:56,300
that language is sort of saying that Eastern peoples need to be controlled by tyranny and

104
00:11:56,300 --> 00:12:01,100
can't be controlled by can't be managed by democracy or can't accommodate democracy.

105
00:12:01,100 --> 00:12:09,620
Johnson's, I think throwing all of that on its head and challenging our preconceptions and and stupidities and our prejudices about these differences,

106
00:12:09,620 --> 00:12:13,790
saying humanity is all the same. We all have unspoken desires and wishes.

107
00:12:13,790 --> 00:12:18,560
We manifest them in different ways, and we all need to find ways of governing those desires and wishes.

108
00:12:18,560 --> 00:12:22,040
So in that respect, I would say it's a great little parable for our own time.

109
00:12:22,040 --> 00:12:26,030
But it also tells you something about enlightenment,

110
00:12:26,030 --> 00:12:36,650
18th century understandings of what constitutes the humane and what constitutes human desire in other respects.

111
00:12:36,650 --> 00:12:44,940
It's interesting to me. It's a lovely little story which gives women's voices great power and authority, which I think is very interesting to us.

112
00:12:44,940 --> 00:12:48,740
And the kyre has a kind of equivalence with Rasselas.

113
00:12:48,740 --> 00:12:56,570
In some ways it's not unsurprising, but it's pretty conventional that it's Rasselas who goes out and finds out how political government works.

114
00:12:56,570 --> 00:13:02,720
And the kyre is interested in finding out how marriage works and whether you can ever be happy in marriage.

115
00:13:02,720 --> 00:13:12,110
I always like the fact that she concludes that you simply can't, although she says celibacy is pretty miserable, too.

116
00:13:12,110 --> 00:13:16,280
But also she's she's an equal disputant with her brother.

117
00:13:16,280 --> 00:13:22,520
She's a rationalist. She's a thinker. But she's also understood to be the voice of loss and grief.

118
00:13:22,520 --> 00:13:24,470
This connexion to Pecola.

119
00:13:24,470 --> 00:13:32,330
It's also true that the characters who need to be healed from their delusions are partly healed by spending time in mixed company.

120
00:13:32,330 --> 00:13:33,590
So there are a number of men.

121
00:13:33,590 --> 00:13:39,980
There's a mad astronomer who believes that he can control the weather and this is because he spent too long on his own and in a tower and away.

122
00:13:39,980 --> 00:13:45,230
That he's cured is by spending time with Rasselas and with his and with the women.

123
00:13:45,230 --> 00:13:49,130
So being put back into company for Johnson and Johnson was a man who suffered from

124
00:13:49,130 --> 00:13:56,090
depression and clearly found company an important part of managing his depressive moments.

125
00:13:56,090 --> 00:14:03,230
So there's lots of really wonderful little kind of pockets of experience for you as a reader of Rasselas.

126
00:14:03,230 --> 00:14:11,390
Whilst it's also a quick and enjoyable read, which isn't always true of many of the Oriental tale sequences I've read, which can be very,

127
00:14:11,390 --> 00:14:15,890
very long and have wonderful little delightful insect stories,

128
00:14:15,890 --> 00:14:24,725
but don't have the kind of tightness and order and playfulness that you find in Johnson's little as he called his little story book.