Browning Upon Arabia

Description

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. Front Matter ....Pages i-xvii Introduction: Browning upon Arabia (Hédi A. Jaouad)....Pages 1-18 Front Matter ....Pages 19-19 Browning and the Arabesque (Hédi A. Jaouad)....Pages 21-53 Front Matter ....Pages 55-55 Abd-El-Kadr, or ‘The Found Leader’ (Hédi A. Jaouad)....Pages 57-97 Browning and Ancient Arabic Poetry (Hédi A. Jaouad)....Pages 99-106 Muléykeh: A Sufi Parable (Hédi A. Jaouad)....Pages 107-123 Front Matter ....Pages 125-125 The Return of the Druses: Djabal, Betwixt and Between (Hédi A. Jaouad)....Pages 127-153 Luria: The Second Coming of the Moor (Hédi A. Jaouad)....Pages 155-183 Front Matter ....Pages 185-185 Rabbis, Sages, and Dervishes (Hédi A. Jaouad)....Pages 187-210 Conclusion: An Incipient Arabism? (Hédi A. Jaouad)....Pages 211-217 Back Matter ....Pages 219-240