The Satiric Group

In France satire used the oriental tale seriously for the purpose of criticizing contemporary society, morals, and politics; but also turned its criticism against the oriental tale itself, which it travestied and parodied. These forms of satire we may term, respectively, social and literary, — the former, satire by means of the oriental tale; the latter, satire upon the oriental tale. Such social satire had appeared as far back as 1684 with the publication of L’Espion turc ¹ by Giovanni Paolo Marana. This pseudo-oriental translation catered to the growing interest in the Orient, contributing an important element to the oriental vogue not actually inaugurated until the publication of the epoch-making Mille et une Nuits (1704–1717). The genre of pseudo-letters, founded — so far as we know — by Marana, was continued by Charles Rivière Dufresny in his Amusemens (sic) 156 serieux et comiques (1699), ¹ culminated in the Lettres Persanes (1721) of Montesquieu, and was widely diffused by a score of imitators. ² A particularly light and humorous form of social satire is exemplified in Marmontel’s prose tale, Soliman II.