Borrowed Imagination: the British Romantic Poets and Their Arabic-Islamic Sources

Description

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.;Introduction : The English romantic poets: their background, their country's history, and the sources that influenced their literary output -- Borrowed imagination in the wake of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and The Arabian Nights -- The riots of colors, sights, and sounds: John Keats' melancholic lover and the east -- The natural goodness of man: William Wordsworth's journey from the sensuous to the sublime -- Poetic intuition and mystic vision: William Blake's quest for equality and freedom -- The interrogation of political and social systems: Percy Bysshe Shelley's call for drastic societal change -- 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? Introduction : The English romantic poets: their background, their country's history, and the sources that influenced their literary output -- Borrowed imagination in the wake of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and The Arabian Nights -- The riots of colors, sights, and sounds: John Keats' melancholic lover and the east -- The natural goodness of man: William Wordsworth's journey from the sensuous to the sublime -- Poetic intuition and mystic vision: William Blake's quest for equality and freedom -- The interrogation of political and social systems: Percy Bysshe Shelley's call for drastic societal change -- 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?