The Persian Presence in Victorian Poetry Reza Taher-Kermani 66276_Taher-Kermani.indd276_Taher-Kermani.indd i 224/02/204/02/20 11:14:14 PPMM Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © Reza Taher-Kermani, 2020 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road, 12(2f) Jackson’s Entry, Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 11/13 Adobe Sabon by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd, and printed and bound in Great Britain. A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 4816 1 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 4818 5 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 4819 2 (epub) The right of Reza Taher-Kermani to be identifi ed as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). 66276_Taher-Kermani.indd276_Taher-Kermani.indd iiii 224/02/204/02/20 11:14:14 PPMM Contents Series Editor’s Preface iv Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 1. Persia in the West 13 2. Persia and Nineteenth-Century English Poetry 75 3. ‘Sohrab and Rustum’ 114 4. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 146 5. Ferishtah’s Fancies 174 Epilogue: The Persian Presence in Victorian Poetry 204 Bibliography 207 Index 221 66276_Taher-Kermani.indd276_Taher-Kermani.indd iiiiii 224/02/204/02/20 11:14:14 PPMM Series Editor’s Preface ‘Victorian’ is a term, at once indicative of a strongly determined con- cept and an often notoriously vague notion, emptied of all mean- ingful content by the many journalistic misconceptions that persist about the inhabitants and cultures of the British Isles and Victoria’s Empire in the nineteenth century. As such, it has become a by-word for the assumption of various, often contradictory habits of thought, belief, behaviour and perceptions. Victorian studies and studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture have, from their institu- tional inception, questioned narrowness of presumption, pushed at the limits of the nominal defi nition, and have sought to question the very grounds on which the unrefl ective perception of the so-called Victorian has been built; and so they continue to do. Victorian and nineteenth-century studies of literature and culture maintain a breadth and diversity of interest, of focus and inquiry, in an interrogative and intellectually open-minded and challenging manner, which are equal to the exploration and inquisitiveness of its subjects. Many of the questions asked by scholars and researchers of the innumerable pro- ductions of nineteenth-century society actively put into suspension the clichés and stereotypes of ‘Victorianism’, whether the approach has been sustained by historical, scientifi c, philosophical, empirical, ideological or theoretical concerns; indeed, it would be incorrect to assume that each of these approaches to the idea of the Victorian has been, or has remained, in the main exclusive, sealed off from the interests and engagements of other approaches. A vital interdisciplin- arity has been pursued and embraced, for the most part, even as there has been contest and debate amongst Victorianists, pursued with as much fervour as the affi rmative exploration between different dis- ciplines and differing epistemologies put to work in the service of reading the nineteenth century. Edinburgh Critical Studies in Victorian Culture aims to take up both the debates and the inventive approaches and departures from convention that studies in the nineteenth century have witnessed for 66276_Taher-Kermani.indd276_Taher-Kermani.indd iivv 224/02/204/02/20 11:14:14 PPMM Series Editor’s Preface v the last half century at least. Aiming to maintain a ‘Victorian’ (in the most positive sense of that motif) spirit of inquiry, the series’ purpose is to continue and augment the cross-fertilisation of interdisciplinary approaches, and to offer, in addition, a number of timely and untimely revisions of Victorian literature, culture, history and identity. At the same time, the series will ask questions concerning what has been missed or improperly received, misread, or not read at all, in order to present a multi-faceted and heterogeneous kaleidoscope of repre- sentations. Drawing on the most provocative, thoughtful and original research, the series will seek to prod at the notion of the ‘Victorian’, and in so doing, principally through theoretically and epistemologically sophisticated close readings of the historicity of literature and culture in the nineteenth century, to offer the reader provocative insights into a world that is at once overly familiar, and irreducibly different, other and strange. Working from original sources, primary documents and recent interdisciplinary theoretical models, Edinburgh Critical Studies in Victorian Culture seeks not simply to push at the boundaries of research in the nineteenth century, but also to inaugurate the persistent erasure and provisional, strategic redrawing of those borders. Julian Wolfreys 66276_Taher-Kermani.indd276_Taher-Kermani.indd v 224/02/204/02/20 11:14:14 PPMM Acknowledgements I fi nished the fi rst draft of this monograph in 2014 at the University of Bristol. But I completed it fi ve years later at Nazarbayev University. The seeds of the study were, however, sown during my MA year which coincided with the bicentenary of the birth of Edward FitzGerald and the commemorative publication of the Oxford University Press edition of Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (2010), edited by Daniel Karlin, who was at the time a Professor in the School of English at the University of Sheffi eld, and who later became my MA and PhD supervisor and a lifelong mentor and advisor. As someone who had always wanted to incorporate the literary- cultural signifi cance of his Iranian heritage within the scope of his literary studies, this was a good opportunity to make a long-held dream a reality. As such, I wrote my thesis on the hybrid (Anglo-Persian) nature of FitzGerald’s translation and later decided to prepare a longer study on the British cultural and imaginative engagements with Persia in the nineteenth century. The cheeriest, and the most challenging, moments of preparing this study have been shared with many people, to whom I am indebted indefi - nitely. My fi rst and foremost debt of gratitude goes to my teacher and professor, Daniel Karlin. Without his erudition, support and guidance, I would have never been able to complete this monograph. I would also like to thank members, past and present, of the Department of English in Bris- tol, especially Professor David Hopkins, Dr Jane Wright, Dr John Lyon and Dr Stephen Cheeke. I would like to particularly thank Dr Samantha Matthews for her mentorship and guidance, both in Bristol and Sheffi eld. Her instruction and supervision helped me begin my graduate studies and academic career on the right foot. I am also indebted to Professor Joe Phelan (De Montfort University) for his support and critical commen- tary on various sections of this study. Thanks are also due to Dr Andrew Reynolds (Wisconsin-Madison) for his mentorship and critical engage- ment with my work. I would like to express my gratitude to my friends in Sheffi eld, Bristol, London, and Tehran for providing the encourage- ment and friendship I needed. Especial thanks go to Craig Savage, Danny Adams, Mohammad Nassaji, and Dr Gavin Schwartz-Leeper (University of Warwick). I would also like to thank my parents, Mohammad-Ali (Shahpoor) Taher- Kermani and Shahnaz Saeedvarnia. It was under their watchful eyes that I gained the ability to tackle challenges head on, that I learned about com- mitment, perseverance, consistency and dedication. My brother Ali with his infi nite support and friendship has also been a great source of joy and inspira- tion. To these people, I owe a lifelong debt, and I can only hope that I can one day show how much I love and appreciate them. Reza Taher-Kermani 66276_Taher-Kermani.indd276_Taher-Kermani.indd vvii 224/02/204/02/20 11:14:14 PPMM Edinburgh Critical Studies in Victorian Culture Series Editor: Julian Wolfreys Recent books in the series: Rudyard Kipling’s Fiction: Mapping Psychic Spaces The Fin-de-Siècle Scottish Revival: Romance, Decadence Lizzy Welby and Celtic Identity The Decadent Image: The Poetry of Wilde, Symons and Michael Shaw Dowson Contested Liberalisms: Martineau, Dickens and the Kostas Boyiopoulos Victorian Press British India and Victorian Literary Culture Iain Crawford Máire ní Fhlathúin Plotting Disability in the Nineteenth-Century Novel Anthony Trollope’s Late Style: Victorian Liberalism and Clare Walker Gore Literary Form The Aesthetics of Space in Nineteenth-Century British Frederik Van Dam Literature, 1843–1907 Dark Paradise: Pacifi c Islands in the Nineteenth-Century Giles Whiteley British Imagination The Persian Presence in Victorian Poetry Jenn Fuller Reza Taher-Kermani Twentieth-Century Victorian: Arthur Conan Doyle and the Strand Magazine, 1891–1930 Forthcoming volumes: Jonathan Cranfi eld Her Father’s Name: Gender, Theatricality and Spiritualism The Lyric Poem and Aestheticism: Forms of Modernity in Florence Marryat’s Fiction Marion Thain Tatiana Kontou Gender, Technology and the New Woman The Sculptural Body in Victorian Literature: Encrypted Lena Wånggren Sexualities Self-Harm in New Woman Writing Patricia Pulham Alexandra Gray Olive Schreiner and the Politics of Print Culture, Suffragist Artists in Partnership: Gender, Word and Image 1883–1920 Lucy Ella Rose Clare Gill Victorian Liberalism and Material Culture: Synergies of Victorian Auto/Biography: Problems in Genre and Subject Thought and Place Amber Regis Kevin A. Morrison Gissing, Shakespeare and the Life of Writing The Victorian Male Body Thomas Ue Joanne-Ella Parsons and Ruth Heholt Women’s Mobility in Henry James Nineteenth-Century Settler Emigration in British Literature Anna Despotopoulou and Art Michael Field’s Revisionary Poetics Fariha Shaikh Jill Ehnenn The Pre-Raphaelites and Orientalism The Americanisation of W.