Islam as Imagined in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century English Literature [Paperback]

Contents

Introduction: Aim, Scope, Historical Background, Current Literature and Terminology.

Chapter One: Islamic References in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century English Literature

Chapter Two: The Eighteenth Century: A New Genre (Pseudo-Oriental Literature)

Chapter Three: Eighteenth Century Plays, Novels and Poems with Orientalist Settings or Allusions

Chapter Four: Islam as Imagined by Romantic writers in the Nineteenth Century. 

Chapter Five: Views of the Orient and of Islam from Outside the British Metropole.

Chapter Six: Liminality and the Representation of Islam and the Orient 

Conclusion: Becoming Comfortable with Difference in 21^st Century America

Index

Aimed at a non-specialist readership, this survey of early modern English literature examines how writers represented Islam. Many aimed to foment hostility or to encourage friendship. Anyone interested in how stereotypes are perpetuated and can be challenged today in an increasingly Islamophobic Western world will profit from reading it.

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 books thesis into dialogue with tl3Æ