. Islam and Romantic Orientalism will be of great interest to those concerned with the debate about orientalism and post-colonialism and to students of nineteenth-century English literature.

Revealing Islam’s formative influence on literary Romanticism, this book recounts a lively narrative of religious and aesthetic exchange, mapping the impact of Muslim sources on the West’s most seminal authors. Spanning continents and centuries, the book surveys Islamic receptions that bridge Romantic periods and personalities, unfolding from Europe, to Britain, to America, embracing iconic figures from Goethe, to Byron, to Emerson, as well as authors less widely recognized, such as Joseph Hammer-Purgstall. Broad in historical scope, Islam and Romanticism is also particular in personal detail, exposing Islam’s role as a creative catalyst, but also as a spiritual resource, with the Qur’an and Sufi poetry infusing the literary publications, but also the private lives, of Romantic writers. Highlighting cultural encounter, rather than political exploitation, the book differs from previous treatments by accenting Western receptions that transcend mere “Orientalism”, finding the genesis of a global literary culture first emerging in the Romantics’ early appeal to Islamic traditions.

The study is divided in five chapters. The first chapter presents an overview of English literature from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century indicating the recurrence of certain images and ideas about Islam and the Muslims throughout the centuries. The second chapter analyses Southey's epics. The third chapter deals with Shelley's The Revolt of Islam and Hellas. The fourth evaluates Tom Moore's Eastern romance Lalla Rook and The Loves of the Angels, and the last examines Byron's Turkish Tales and Don Juan.

Orientalist Poetics is the only book on literary orientalism that spans the nineteenth century in both England and France with particular attention to poetry and poetics. It convincingly demonstrates orientalism's centrality to the evolution of poetry and poetics in both nations, and provides a singularly comprehensive and definitive analysis of the aesthetic impact of orientalism on nineteenth-century poetry. Because it examines the poetry of the entire century across both national literatures, the book is in a unique position to articulate the essential part orientalism plays in major developments of nineteenth-century poetics. Through probing discussions of an array of prominent nineteenth-century poets-including Shelley, Southey, Byron, Hugo, Musset, Leconte de Lisle, Wordsworth, Hemans, Gautier, Tennyson, Arnold and Wilde-Emily A. Haddad reveals how orientalism functions as a diffuse avant-garde, a crucial medium for the cultivation and refinement of a broad range of experimental positions on poetry and poetics. Haddad argues that while orientalist poems are often viewed mainly as artefacts of European attitudes towards the East and imperialism, poetic representations of the Islamic Orient also provide an indispensable matrix for the reexamination of such aesthetically fundamental issues as the purpose of poetry, the value of mimesis, and the relationship between nature and art. Orientalist Poetics effectively bridges the gap between the analysis of poetics and the analysis of orientalism. In showing that major poetic developments have roots in orientalism, Haddad's book offers a valuable and innovative revisionist view of nineteenth-century literary history.