Browning Upon Arabia: A Moveable East

ISBN-13: 9783319926476 / Angielski / Twarda / 2018 / 240 str.

Hedi a. Jaouad

Opis

Browning Upon Arabia charts Robert Browning's early and enduring engagement with the East, particularly the Arab East.

Recenzje

"Jaouad's book will, however, prove a useful resource to students, scholars, and admirers of Browning's poetry, and indeed to anyone interested in the manifold networks of cultural affiliation and response evidenced by Victorian literature. Its range of reference and scholarship will undoubtedly lead to the satisfaction of Jaouad's desire to 'excite further interest in Browning's life-long fascination with Eastern religion, culture, and literature' ... ." (Joseph Hankinson, Modern Language Review, Vol. 115 (3), July, 2020)

Spis treści

1.      Introduction: Browning Upon Arabia

 

Part I: Browning And The Arabesque

2.      Browning and the Arabesque

2.1  The East in Browning’s Arabesque

2.2  The ‘Arab’ in Browning’s Arabesque

2.3  An Arabesque of Names

 

Part II:  Browning in Arabia

3.      Abd-el-Kadr, or ‘The Found Leader’

3.1 The Genesis

3.2 The Historical Code

3.3 The Political Code

3.4 The Hermeneutic Code: Kadr or Kader?

3.5 The Mystical Code

3.6 Rider, Writer, Reader

 

4.      Browning and Ancient Arabic Poetry

4.1 The ‘Transmigration’ of Rajaz to Anapest

 

5.      Muléykeh: A Sufi Parable

5.1  How To Love A Horse

5.2  Muléykeh through ‘the Persian Sofi’s Eye’

 

 

Part III: The Return of the (Repressed) East

6.  The Return of the Druses: Djabal, Betwixt and Between

6.1 ‘Throw All Prejudice Aside’

6.2 On the Druse Trail: From Browning to Disraeli

6.3 Dreux or Druse?

6.4 Djabal: Betwixt Hamlet and Othello

 

7.  Luria: The Second Coming of the Moor 

7.1 Portrait of the Moor as the ‘Inevitable Foe’

7.2 Luria Is No Othello

7.3 ‘To be ‘where’ not to be / Is perhaps also the question’

7.4 The Wall and the Trace

7.5 The Prophet’s Bride

7.6 ‘I Will Forestall Them’

7.7 A Renaissance-Moorish Moment

 

Part IV: A Moveable East: Rabbis, Sages, and Dervishes

8. A Moveable East: Rabbis, Sages, and Dervishes

8.1 The Arab Hakeem: An Avicennean Reading of An Epistle

8.2 The Andalusian Rabbi: Another Renaissance Moment

8.3 The Persian Dervish: A Barmecidal Feast

 

9. Conclusion: An Incipient Arabism?

 

O autorze

Hédi A. Jaouad is Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Skidmore College, USA. He is also the author of Limitless Undying Love: The Ballad of John and Yoko & The Brownings (2015), The Brownings’ Shadow at Yaddo (2014), and Browningmania, America’s Love for Robert Browning (2016). He is the editor of Revue CELAAN, a journal dedicated to the promotion of North African literature and art.

Blurb

Browning Upon Arabia charts Robert Browning’s early and enduring engagement with the East, particularly the Arab East. This book highlights the complexities of Browning’s poetry, revealing Browning’s resistance to triumphalist and imperialist forms of Orientalism generated by many nineteenth-century British and European literary and scholarly portrayals of the East. Hédi A. Jaouad argues that Browning extensively researched the literature, history, philosophy, and culture of the East to produce poetry that is sensitive to its Eastern resources and devoted to confirming the interrelation of Northern and Eastern knowledge in pursuit of a new form of transcendental humanism.