Borrowed Imagination

The British Romantic Poets and Their Arabic-Islamic Sources

By (author) Samar Attar

Publication date:

19 February 2014

Length of book:

246 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

Dimensions:

235x160mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9780739187616

Borrowed Imagination: The British Romantic Poets and Their Arabic-Islamic Sources examines masterpieces of English Romantic poetry and shows the Arabic and Islamic sources that inspired Coleridge, Wordsworth, Blake, Shelley, Keats, and Byron when composing their poems in the eighteenth, or early nineteenth century. Critics have documented Greek and Roman sources but turned a blind eye to nonwestern materials at a time when the romantic poets were reading them. The book shows how the Arabic-Islamic sources had helped the British Romantic Poets not only in finding their own voices, but also their themes, metaphors, symbols, characters and images. The British Romantic Poets and Their Arabic-Islamic Sources is of interest to scholars in English and comparative literature, literary studies, philosophy, religion, government, history, cultural, and Middle Eastern studies and the general public.

Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction. The English Romantic Poets: Their Background, Their Country’s History, and the Sources that Influenced Their Literary Output
Chapter One. Borrowed Imagination in the Wake of Terror: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Arabian Nights
Chapter Two. The Riots of Colors, Sights, and Sounds: John Keats’ Melancholic Lover and the East
Chapter Three. The Natural Goodness of Man: William Wordsworth’s Journey from the Sensuous to the Sublime
Chapter Four. Poetic Intuition and Mystic Vision: William Blake’s Quest for Equality and Freedom
Chapter Five. The Interrogation of Political and Social Systems: Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Call for Drastic Societal Change
Chapter Six. The Infatuation With Personal, Political, and Poetic Freedom: George Gordon Byron and his Byronic Hero
Conclusion. How Valid is Kipling’s Phrase that East and West Can Never Meet?
Bibliography
Appendices
About the author
Index

This erudite study is the genesis of careful consideration over some years. In Borrowed Imagination, Attar brings to bear an impressive array of works by the British Romantic poets and Islamic-Arab sources. This work could be only undertaken by a scholar with an impressive knowledge of both Western and Eastern literature. Attar is one of the few scholars in the field today who can claim such credentials. . . .Attar’s work is a major step toward rectifying the lacuna in acknowledging and recognizing Arab-Islamic influences on Western literature. . . .Borrowed Imagination should become essential reading for anyone studying or writing about the Romantic poets. It not only widens our understanding of the Romantic poets and their work but also draws attention to the centuries old interaction of West and East.