Cambridge Scholars Publishing Perspectives: Romantic, Victorian, and Modern Literature

Perspectives: Romantic, Victorian, and Modern Literature is an up-to-date explication of various popular and classic subjects and authors arranged chronologically. The book, composed of thirteen essays, examines Blake; Coleridge; Byron; Shelley; Keats; Victorian medievalism; the Victorian reaction to British India; (Ben) Jonsonian elements in Yeats; Yeats and Maud Gonne; the treatment of the Irish civil war and Irish nationalism in Yeats; and the treatment of the Spanish civil war in the selected works of modern fiction and nonfiction. Marked by an originality of approach and a freshness and simplicity, the book takes note of contemporary theoretical, interdisciplinary and cultural discourse drawn from literature, history, politics and religion as necessary. However, it is far from being unnecessarily outweighed by the loaded clichés, oft-repeated jargon and overused euphemisms of modern literary or critical theory. The result is, regardless of its specialized treatment of otherwise commonplace or well-known texts or topics, that the overall discussion is as lucid, introductory and expository as it is deep and scholarly, making the book easily accessible and understandable to non-specialist readers, in addition to specialist researchers and academics. Review “In the present volume, Jalal Khan is not so much interested in polemical or revisionary readings of the selected texts as he is in conveying an increased mutual understanding of East and West in them with respect to key issues―political, aesthetic, historical, cultural, ethical, and biographical. As the term “perspectives” of the title implies, the book is expressive of his ultimate pluralism with regard to method and to the particular texts enjoined. Its unity as a collection of essays is not to be found in a single overriding thesis or a continuity in the works discussed, but in the literary sensibility of Khan himself―his high regard for literature as a means of ethical inquiry and enhancement, and his scholarly and critical breadth of literary engagement.”Laurence S. LockridgeProfessor of English, New York University“This book consists of a series of essays which explore the contributions of writers from the Romantic through the Victorian and modern periods. It offers fascinating accounts of a number of texts, in each case invoking unusual historical and literary backgrounds which frame its culturally diverse perspective. The book is richly informed by insights drawn from new historicism and critiques of orientalist theory, but is always written in clear and elegant English and is marked by the author’s richly-developed literary and cultural sensibility.”M.A.R. HabibProfessor of English, Rutgers University “Dr Khan has produced an intriguing collection of essays which makes us reevaluate and reconsider certain aspects of nineteenth century English literature, especially English attitudes to Egypt and India and the East in general. This is a “must read” for anyone interested in alternative views of the Orient and Romanticism.”John WallenEditor-in-Chief, The Victorian About the Author A graduate from New York University, Dr Jalal Uddin Khan is a Professor of English at the University of Nizwa, Oman. He has published numerous articles in various Asian and Western journals. His recent publications include this book and its companion, Readings in Oriental Literature: Arabian, Indian, and Islamic, also published by CSP (2015). Dr Khan’s teaching and research interests include Old and Middle English; Shakespeare; the long and late eighteenth century; Romantic/Victorian poetry; Romantic women poets; children’s literature; Western travel literature about the Middle East through the nineteenth century; and the growth and development of Canadian literature in the early nineteenth century. He has vast experience of teaching a broad range of literature courses in all the major periods and genres of English and American literature,