Edinburgh Critical Studies in Victorian Culture

The Persian Presence in Victorian Poetry

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About this book

A study of the wealth of meanings that ‘Persia’ – real or imagined – held for Victorian poetry
  • Takes a broad, interdisciplinary approach to a significant strand in the ‘Oriental’ texture of Victorian poetry
  • Contributes to a growing body of research on the process of cultural exchange between the West and the ‘Orient’
  • Provides the first systematic index of nineteenth-century ‘Persianised’ poems
  • Offers a distinctive mix of history and literature, dealing with an array of texts, ranging from ancient Greece to nineteenth-century British travel writings

The Persian Presence in Victorian Poetry surveys the variety of ways in which Persia, and the multitude of ideological, historical, cultural and political notions that it embodied, were received, circulated and appropriated. Providing the first systematic index of nineteenth-century poems that were in any way involved with Persia, the book explores its presence across a broad range of works incorporating literary, historical and cultural material.

Reviews

With unusually broad erudition in both Persian and English literary traditions, Reza Taher-Kermani examines in detail how the two cultural worlds interact. What he gives us amounts to a meditation on the nature of literary influence.
Table of contents

Introduction

1. Persia in the West

2. Persia and Nineteenth-Century English Poetry

3. ‘Sohrab and Rustum’

4. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

5. Ferishtah’s Fancies

EpilogueBibliographyIndex

About the author

Reza Taher-Kermani

Reza Taher-Kermani is Assistant Professor of 18th and 19th Century British Literature at Concordia University, Montreal. He is the author of many articles, including “The Rubáiyát: A Labour of Love”, Victoriographies, 7/1. 2017: Edinburgh University Press and “Why the Oxus? On the Majestic River of Arnold’s ‘Sohrab and Rustum’”, The Review of English Studies, 69/289. 2018: Oxford University Press.

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