Table Of ContentORIENTALIST POETICS
To
Philip and Robby
and to the memory of
George
Orientalist Poetics
The Islamic Middle East in
nineteenth-century
English and French poetry
EMILY A. HADDAD
Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2002 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge
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Copyright © Emily A. Haddad 2002
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Haddad, Emily A.
Orientalist poetics : the Islamic Middle East in
nineteenth-century English and French poetry. - (Nineteenth
century series)
1. English poetry - 19th century - History and criticism
2. French poetry - 19th century - History and criticism
3. Middle East - In literature
I. Title
821.8*09956
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Haddad, Emily A.
Orientalist poetics : the Islamic Middle East in nineteenth-century English and French
poetry/ Emily A. Haddad.
p. cm, - (The nineteenth century series)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-7546-0304-0 (alk. paper)
1. English poetry-Oriental influences. 2. Middle East—In literature. 3. English
poetry-19th century—History and criticism. 4. French poetry- 19th century-History and
criticism. 5. Civilization, Islamic, in literature. 6. French poetry-Oriental influences. 7.
Islam in literature. 8. Orientalism. I. Title, n. Nineteenth century (Aldershot, England)
PR129.M54 H33 2001
821'.8093256--dc21 2001046047
ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-0304-7 (hbk)
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1 To instruct without displeasing: Percy Shelley's The Revolt of Islam 11
and Robert Southey's Thalaba the Destroyer
Instruction in The Revolt of Islam 13
Tyranny: the Orient's chief export 17
Tyranny's comrades: religion and sexism 21
Orientalism and Shelley's poetics 25
Morals vs. materials: instruction and pleasure in Thalaba 28
the Destroyer
The desert, Islam: foreignness as a hermeneutic category 33
Foreignness general and particular: character as archetype 35
Extremes: too many notes ? 41
Southey and his readers: delighted, informed, or 45
distressed
Representation and the "Arabesque ornament" 47
2 Representing, misrepresenting, not representing: 54
Victor Hugo's Les Orientates and Alfred de Musset's "Namouna"
Hugo's preface: poetic ideals and the Orient as subject 55
"La Douleur du pacha": the Orient as origin or as end 59
"Adieux de 1'hotesse arabe": stasis 62
"Novembre": returning to Paris, the self, and mimesis 65
Hugo's critics: E.J. Chetelat 70
George Gordon Byron's Don Juan: "But what's reality?" 74
"Namouna": fragmentary representation 79
No narrative, no representation 85
Authority, referents, and representation 90
The Middle East: "impossible a decrire" 97
vi CONTENTS
3 Orientalist poetics and the nature of the Middle East 101
William Wordsworth and the nature of the Middle East 103
Felicia Hemans's ambivalence 109
Truth in illustrating Robert Southey and Thomas Moore 113
Leconte de Lisle: "Le Desert," "le desert du monde" 118
Theophile Gautier: the composite desert 125
"In deserto": European nature in absentia 130
Out of the desert: Byron's "Turkish Tales" 136
Matthew Arnold in Bukhara: nature in the Middle 141
Eastern city
Alfred Tennyson's Basra: natural phenomena and urban 147
construction
Orientalist poetics, Oscar Wilde 152
4 The Orient's art, orienting art 155
A confederation of the Middle East and art: Wordsworth 155
The Middle East as a source of art: Leconte de Lisle 157
Middle Eastern art and Gautier's imagination 164
Nightingales and roses I: Walter Savage Landor and 171
oriental literature
Nightingales and roses II: Moore and the Orient as an 175
ideal
Hemans's Middle Eastern models 178
Grounding a poetics in the 1001 Nights: Tennyson 183
The Orient and Tennyson's p(a)lace of art 187
Gautier's orientalist poetics and art for art's sake 192
Orientalist poetics, Oscar Wilde: culmination 199
Bibliography 202
Index 216
Acknowledgments
A poem may be the product of a single mind and heart, but a work of criticism
usually is not. I have many people to thank for their help. First always are my
husband, John Erikson, and my sons, Philip and Robby. I am grateful to my
mother, Helen R. Haddad, for caring for my children so that I could complete
my dissertation (the basis for this book), and to my father, Robert M. Haddad,
for being the model of a committed and honest scholar. My sister Josette
Haddad edited this book with more attention than it deserves. Leila Borowsky,
George Haddad, Josette Generale, and Jean Rogerson provided cheering
support at difficult moments.
The shape of this book owes much to Barbara Johnson, who directed my
dissertation with sensitivity and brilliance, and to Sandra Naddaff, who
introduced me to orientalism and whose clear perspective and warm friendship
have been important to me for nearly twenty years. Stephen Owen and James
Engell provided invaluable help with early drafts. Linda Simon has been a
source of calm and good advice throughout. My thanks are due as well to
Wheeler Thackston for comments on part of chapter 4, and to Amber Vogel for
suggestions on the portion of chapter 3 published in modified form by the
Journal of African Travel-Writing. Since receiving my doctorate from Harvard
University and taking a position in the English Department at the University of
South Dakota, I have been especially grateful to Susan Wolfe for her
confidence in my work and for making sure that I had the time I needed to
finish writing this book. I must also thank Sasha Erickson for assistance with
research and Christelle Gonthier for checking my translations of French texts.
I would not have been in a position to undertake this project without the
financial support of several institutions. Grants from the Fulbright Foundation
and the Center for Arabic Study Abroad enabled me to study in Cairo for
almost two years. A Jacob Javits Fellowship supported much of my graduate
education. I completed my dissertation with the help of a fellowship from the
Whiting Foundation. Support for additional research was provided by a faculty
development grant from the University of South Dakota.
I acknowledge with thanks permission to quote copyrighted material from
Oxford University Press and from Societe d'edition "Les Belles Lettres."
This book was expertly guided through the publication process by Erika
Gaffhey of Ashgate Publishing. I am grateful also to Claire Annals, Alec
McAuley, and Ruth Peters for additional help at various stages of that process.
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Introduction
Throughout the nineteenth century, British and French poets wrote widely and
often on oriental topics. Even William Wordsworth, who was never an
enthusiastic orientalist, participated, sketching the Orient as a place of risk and
fantasy,
Stocked with Pachas, Seraskiers,
Slaves, and turbaned Buccaneers;
Sensual Mussulmen atrocious,
Renegades, more ferocious!
Percy Bysshe Shelley saw instead a languid woman lying "in the paradise of
Lebanon / Under a heaven of cedar boughs."2 Victor Hugo found a city of
crescents, blue domes, and great harems in which sultanas danced on silk
carpets to the sound of drums.3 Theophile Gautier observed Muslim pilgrims
who counted amber rosaries and an Egyptian peasant woman who, in the guise
of a sphinx, "propose[d] a riddle to desire."4 For Alfred Tennyson, on the other
hand, the East was a "Land of bright eye and lofty brow! / Whose every gale is
balmy breath / Of incense from some sunny flower."5
The striking diversity of these visions of the East reflects the fertility of the
Islamic Orient as a poetic source. The Orient's appeal to poets was formidable
throughout the nineteenth century, more obviously in the early decades, but in
increasingly complex and aesthetically significant ways later on. A
comprehensive anthology of nineteenth-century orientalist poetry would
include poems by almost every British or French poet of the time; poets made
reputations and even a living from writing poems on oriental topics. These
poets were united in a sense of the Orient as an arena for poetic
1 William Wordsworth, Poems, ed. John O. Hayden, vol. 2 (London: Penguin, 1977) 309;
the citation is from "Mary Barker's Lines Addressed to a Noble Lord," written 1814.
2 Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed.
Thomas Hutchinson (New York: Oxford UP, 1933) 660; the lines are from an 1821 fragment,
"The Lady of the South."
3 Victor Hugo, Odes et ballades, Les Orientates, ed. Jean Gaudon (Paris: Flammarion,
1968) 340; the poem is "Les Tetes du serail" ["The Heads of the Seraglio"], published 1829.
4 Theophile Gautier, Poesies Completes de Theophile Gautier, ed. Rene Jasinski, vol. 3
(Paris: Nizet, 1970) 94, 112; the poems are "Ce que disent les hirondelles" ["What the
Swallows Say"] and "La Fellah" ["The Fellah"], written 1859 and 1861, respectively. The
cited line is "Propose une enigme au desir," from "La Fellah."
5 Alfred Tennyson, The Poems of Tennyson, ed. Christopher Ricks, vol. 1 (Berkeley: U
of California P, 1987) 114; these are the opening lines of "Persia," published 1827.
