Download Free Oriental Wells Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Oriental Wells and write the review.

Oriental Wells explores the manifold ways in which the East was a major source of inspiration for the British Romantic poets, who generously borrowed from the Eastern sources in their effort to reinvent the British poetic tradition. It examines the “orientalization” of Romantic poetry, using works of William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, and Walter Savage Landor. Analyzing the Romantic poets' multifaceted engagement with the East, the book raises the questions: · What led Blake to formulate his thesis that “All Religions Are One”? · Why do Coleridge's poetry and the play Osorio echo some of the passages from Wilkins' translation of The Bhagvat-Geeta as well as other prominent Eastern religious texts? · What made Southey write his “Hindu epic” The Curse of Kehama and his “Islamic” tale Thalaba, the Destroyer? · What was the exact nature of the negotiations between William Jones' Orientalism and Wordsworth's poetics as formulated in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, The Prelude, and other poems? The book convincingly argues that the introduction of “cultural goods” from the East played a crucial role in shaping the form and substance of British Romanticism, while acknowledging that the Romantics' reception of the East was tempered by their ideological concerns and religious background.
Since medieval times, English literature has often demonized Muslims. The term ‘Islamophobia’ is recent, but the phenomenon is old. This survey of literature focusing on the modern period up to 1914 identifies negative ideas about Islam in novels and plays. Some works are iconic, some more obscure. However, the book highlights writers who challenged stereotypes and tended to see Muslims as equally capable of virtue and vice as Christians and others. The book deals with the role of the imagination in depicting others and how this serves authors’ agendas. The conclusion brings the book’s thesis into dialogue with the debate in the USA today between supporters of multiculturalism and its critics. Anyone interested in how stereotypes are formed, perpetuated and can be challenged will profit from this book. It is aimed at a non-specialist readership.
Lynda Pratt's collection of specially commissioned essays is the first edited volume devoted to the multiple connections between Robert Southey (1774-1843) and English Romantic culture. A major and highly controversial personage in his own day, Southey has until recently been the forgotten member of the Lake School.