EASTERN IMAGERY IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH POETRY

Abstract

The eighteenth century witnessed a significant expansion of English literary engagement with the East, particularly in poetry, where Oriental imagery became a powerful aesthetic, philosophical, and symbolic resource. This article examines the representation and function of Eastern motifs in the poetry of Thomas Gray, William Collins, and selected contemporaries, situating their work within the broader cultural context of Enlightenment curiosity, imperial expansion, and early Orientalist discourse. Through close textual analysis, the study explores how Eastern imagery was employed not merely as exotic ornamentation, but as a means of interrogating emotion, imagination, morality, and the limits of rationalism. By drawing on Persian, Arabic, and Asian symbolic traditions—often filtered through translations, travel literature, and classical analogies—eighteenth-century poets reshaped English poetic language and sensibility. The article argues that Oriental imagery in this period functioned as a transitional aesthetic bridge between neoclassical restraint and Romantic emotional depth, contributing to the evolution of English poetic forms and themes.