Islam as Imagined in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century English Literature

Clinton Bennett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781032383217
  9780367714536
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000787900
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History
• Index: Literature

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.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Aim, Scope, Historical Background, Current Literature and Terminology
• 1 Islamic References in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century English Literature
• 2 The Eighteenth Century: A New Genre (Pseudo-Oriental Literature)
• 3 Eighteenth Century Plays, Novels and Poems with Orientalist Settings or Allusions
• 4 Islam as Imagined by Romantic Writers in the Nineteenth Century
• 5 Views of the Orient and of Islam from Outside the British Metropole
• 6 Liminality and the Representation of Islam and the Orient
• Conclusion: Becoming Comfortable with Difference in 21st-Century America
• Index