The works of composer Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) call to mind a very specific vision of the Orient. While the music reveals shimmering shadow of a tawdrier fin-de-siècle world, summons the warm and dreamy colours used to portray the Orient by writers and painters over the two previous centuries. This lecture provides a window on various aspects of Ravel’s work that develop from a construct of the Orient that was firmly based on stories and the imagination. The composer used a very specific process of appropriation to create some of his most emblematic pieces—a process we would characterize as “poetic” Orientalism. Musical examples will include excerpts from Shéhérazade (1903) and Ma Mère l’Oye (1910).