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Islam as Imagined in Eighteenth-
and Nineteenth-Century English
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 iden-
tifies 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, perpet-
uated and can be challenged will profit from this book. It is aimed at
a non-specialist readership.
Clinton Bennett is a British American scholar of religion and an ordained
Baptist clergyperson who focuses on Christian-Muslim relations. A grad-
uate of Birmingham, Manchester and Oxford Universities his Birming-
ham PhD was awarded in 1990 for a thesis on Victorian images of Islam.
A Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and of the Royal Anthropologi-
cal Institute, he has lived and worked in Australia, Bangladesh, Britain
and the USA. Author of twelve books, he has participated in Interfaith
relations locally, nationally and globally through the World Council of
Churches and other organizations. In the USA, he represents the Alliance
of Baptists in several bilateral dialogues. Currently teaching Religious
Studies at the State University of New York at New Paltz, his previous
posts include director of Interfaith Relations for the British Council of
Churches, senior lecturer at Westminster College, Oxford, and associate
professor at Baylor University, TX.
Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature
147 The Theory and Practice of Reception Study
Reading Race and Gender in Twain, Faulkner, Ellison, and Morrison
Philip Goldstein
148 Language, Style and Variation in Contemporary Indian English
Literary Texts
Esterino Adami
149 Narrative Worlds and the Texture of Time
A Social-Semiotic Perspective
Rosemary Huisman
150 The Words of Winston Churchill
Jonathan Locke Hart
151 Islam as Imagined in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century English
Literature
Clinton Bennett
152 The Politics of Remembrance in the Novels of Günter Grass
Alex Donovan Cole
153 The Words of Winston Churchill
Speeches 1933–1940
Jonathan Locke Hart
154 The Affects of Pedagogy in Literary Studies
Christopher Lloyd and Hilary Emmett
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.
routledge.com/Routledge-Interdisciplinary-Perspectives-on-Literature/
book-series/RIPL
Islam as Imagined in
Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-
Century English Literature
Clinton Bennett
First published 2023
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2023 Clinton Bennett
The right of Clinton Bennett to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
ISBN: 9780367714536 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781032383217 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781003152095 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003152095
Typeset in Sabon
by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
Dedicated to my wife
Rekha Sarker Bennett
Contents
Acknowledgments viii
Introduction: Aim, Scope, Historical Background,
Current Literature and Terminology 1
1 Islamic References in Sixteenth- and
Seventeenth-Century English Literature 28
2 The Eighteenth Century: A New Genre
(Pseudo-Oriental Literature) 43
3 Eighteenth Century Plays, Novels and Poems
with Orientalist Settings or Allusions 67
4 Islam as Imagined by Romantic Writers in the
Nineteenth Century 92
5 Views of the Orient and of Islam from Outside
the British Metropole 121
6 Liminality and the Representation of Islam
and the Orient 143
Conclusion: Becoming Comfortable with
Difference in 21st-Century America 166
Index 176
Acknowledgments
The idea of writing this book occurred while working on entries for
the Brill series, Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History
under Professor Emeritus David Thomas of Birmingham University,
UK, either as a contributor or as an editor. Since 2012, I have served
as section editor for North Europe and, since 2014, as Team Leader for
Western Europe. My previous publications analyzed texts on Islam by
non-Muslims, but these were almost entirely non-fiction. However, as
part of the Christian-Muslim Relations (CMR) project, literary works
such as plays, poems and novels featured prominently, and I realized
that popular perceptions, tropes and images of Muslims in the Western
world today among non-Muslims probably owe more to works of fiction
than to non-fiction. Given that this genre developed in the early modern
period and blossomed in the modern period, I decided to focus on the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with some background on sixteenth
and seventeenth century works. Obviously, fictitious literature draws
on non-fiction, whether written by academics, Christian polemicists,
apologists or travelers to Muslim majority spaces and needs to be dis-
cussed in the context of the authors’ lives, interests, available sources
and historical settings which this book aims to do.
Many of the same ‘tropes’ cross genres. All writers, in a sense, imagine
or construct Islam as they produce their texts, choosing to represent this
religion either as a curse on humanity, as a danger and hindrance to civ-
ilization or as sharing elements in common with Christianity and with
other religions and contributing to human progress. In this way, writers
of fiction might romanticize or exoticize Islam as a religion that permits
forbidden sexual adventures – the mystique of the harem – or they might
demonize Islamic spaces as dark, dangerous, despotic and disturbing.
Depending on their perspective, writers may choose to portray Muslims
as equally human, capable of valor, gallantry and good manners as
Europeans or as the antithesis of Europeans in every way juxtaposing their
alleged dishonesty, deviousness, cruelty and immorality with Europeans’
supposed honesty, industry, integrity and kindness. The alleged s econd
class and oppressed status of Muslim women was a favorite theme.
Acknowledgments ix
Many of these ways of seeing or of imaging Islam and Muslims continue
today and can be heard or seen in the media, films, fiction and non-
fiction literature. The material analyzed in this book includes examples
of literature that demonized Islam and literature that challenges this but
has a bias toward the latter.
I am grateful to many people who have advised and assisted in the
writing process. Not least among these are John T. Gilmore from the
University of Warwick, UK, Omar F. Miranda from the University of
San Francisco and Bernadette Andrea from the University of California,
Santa Barbara, who each commented on my initial proposal to Routledge.
I have tried to take their suggestions on board which were helpful and
constructive. I am also grateful to Jennifer Abbott, editor for Language
and Literature at Routledge, and to her team, for commissioning this
book. Anita Bhatt, editorial assistant for literature at Routledge, has
been patient, helpful and my main point of contact. Many libraries and
providers of electronic resources enabled me to pursue the research pre-
sented below, especially the British Museum Library, London, to which
my Fellowship of the Royal Anthropological Institute gives me access,
and the New York Public Library, of which I am a member. I also express
my gratitude to colleagues, friends and relatives who have encouraged
me not only while working on this book but over many years of teach-
ing, researching and writing. Finally, I dedicate this book to my wife,
Rekha Sarker Bennett.
Clinton Bennett
State University of New York
at New Paltz Spring 2022
