Sufism and American Literary Masters (Suny series in Islam)

Aminrazavi, Mehdi (EDT)/ Needleman, Jacob (FRW)

State University of New York Press（2015/07発売）

• 製本 Paperback:紙装版/ペーパーバック版／ページ数 311 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9781438453521
• DDC分類 297.4167

Full Description

Explores the influence of Sufism on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century writers.

This book reveals the rich, but generally unknown, influence of Sufism on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American literature. The translation of Persian poets such as Hafiz and Sa'di into English and the ongoing popularity of Omar Khayyam offered intriguing new spiritual perspectives to some of the major American literary figures. As editor Mehdi Aminrazavi notes, these Sufi influences have often been subsumed into a notion of "Eastern," chiefly Indian, thought and not acknowledged as having Islamic roots. This work pays considerable attention to two giants of American literature, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman, who found much inspiration from the Sufi ideas they encountered. Other canonical figures are also discussed, including Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Henry David Thoreau, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, along with literary contemporaries who are lesser known today, such as Paschal Beverly Randolph, Thomas Lake Harris, and Lawrence Oliphant.

Contents

Foreword
Jacob Needleman

Introduction
Mehdi Aminrazavi

The English Romantic Background

1. English Romantics and Persian Sufi Poets: a wellspring of Inspiration for American Transcendentalists
Leonard Lewisohn

The Master: Emerson and Sufism

2. The Chronological Development of Emerson's Interest in Persian Mysticism
Mansur Ekhtiyar

3. Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Muslim Orient
Marwan M. Obeidat

4. Emerson and Aspects of Sa'di's Reception in Nineteenth-Century America
Parvin Loloi

5. Emerson on Hafiz and Sa'di: The Narrative of Love and Wine
Farhang Jahanpour

The Disciple: Walt Whitman

6. Whitman and Hafiz: Expressions of Universal Love and Tolerance
Mahnaz Ahmad

7. Walt Whitman and Sufism: Towards "A Persian Lesson"
Massud Farzan

The Initiates: Other American Authors

8. Literary "Masters" in the Literature of Thomas Lake Harris, Lawrence Oliphant, and Paschal Beverly Randolph
Arthur Versluis

9. American Transcendentalists' Interpretations of Sufism: Thoreau, Whitman, Longfellow, Lowell, Melville, and Lafcadio Hearn
John D. Yohannan

10. The Persians of Concord
Phillip N. Edmondson

11. Omarian Poets of America
Mehdi Aminrazavi

12. "Bond Slave to FitzGerald's Omar": Mark Twain and The Rubáiyát
Alan Gribben

13. Mark Twain's Ruba'iyyat: AGE-A Rubáiyát

Glossary
Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index