Middle Eastern influences in Romantic and Victorian Poetry

Three days 'til my Poery and Society exam and I have begun to wish I'd taken an interest in it earlier. Due to various reasons, mostly my attitude towards the course, I haven't worked as hard as I could have this year and now that I am beginning to read the poets of the Romantic and Victorian eras in more depth, I am finding myself enjoying them more and more.

What I really wanted to blog now, is my discovery of Middle Eastern influences in Poetry of this period. Two examples:

Shelley's The Revolt of Islam, a poem in twelve cantos. The revolutionary radicalism in this poem was too much for Shelley's publishers and he was forced to revise it considerably and publish it under another title.

Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustam. Rustam is the epic hero of one of the greatest works in Persian literature, The Shahname and Sohrab was his son. I haven't had the chance to read the poem thoroughly, but it may be Arnold's version of one of The Shahname's many stories concerning Rustam and Sohrab's lives.

: 04 Jun 2006 17:24 |  Tags: Poetry |  Comments (1) |  Report a problem