Borrowed Imagination: The British Romantic Poets and Their Arabic-Islamic Sources by Samar Attar (review)

Samar Attar’s Borrowed Imagination: The British Romantic Poets and Their Arabic-Islamic Sources argues for the influence of The Arabian Nights and other Arabic-Islamic sources, such as Ibn Tufayl’s philosophical text Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, on Romanticism’s canonical male poets. Attar’s book contributes to a recent surge in the study of Romantic orientalism by scholars such as Nigel Leask, Andrew Warren, Gregory Wassil, and Emily Haddad. In a well-rounded and well-researched text, Attar offers a systematic, scholarly re-examination of poetry by Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats in light of their debt to Arabic-Islamic sources. Although part of a current scholarly trend, Attar’s text uniquely and boldly claims that the “innovation” (p. 6) of the Romantic period is attributable to Arabic-Islamic, rather than to Western, sources.

Attar details biographical evidence about these six poets’ interest in The Arabian Nights—such as Coleridge’s father’s burning the text that so absorbed his son and Shelley’s attempts to learn Arabic—then treats the influence of Arabic-Islamic sources on these poets’ work, including Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey,” “Intimations of Immortality,” and The Prelude, and Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Songs of Innocence, and Songs of Experience. Of particular interest are the chapters devoted to Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, and Byron.

Attar details the Arabic-Islamic influence on “Christabel” and “Kubla Khan” but is perhaps most convincing in her analysis of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Attar expounds upon the Rime’s Shahrazadian frame narrative, arguing that the Mariner’s strange power of speech is inspired by the narrative powers of Shahrazad and Sinbad the Sailor. Attar also notes similarities of plot and structure, drawing convincing parallels such as the “coincidence” of Sinbad’s seven voyages corresponding in number to the Rime’s seven parts. While never straying from her overarching goal of demonstrating the Rime’s Arabic-Islamic sources, this chapter is packed with fascinating side notes, such as the Arabic root of the word “albatross”—“al-qatras.”

Her discussion of Shelley’s The Revolt of Islam chronicles early Islamic history during the caliphate of ‘Uthman (the third caliph of the Muslim Empire), arguing that Aisha (the Prophet Mohammed’s youngest wife) is a model for Shelley’s Cythna and ‘Uthman for Shelley’s despot:

It is most likely that Shelley had chosen this sympathetic portrait of the most independent Arab woman (Aisha) … to be the model for his Cythna. On the other hand, ‘Uthman’s deceit is akin to that of Shelley’s despot. The Arab ruler promised to look into the demands of the rebels, but later changed his mind. Furthermore, if one feels sorry for the fasting Arab ‘Uthman to be killed while he was reading the Qur’an all alone deserted by his supporters, one also sympathizes with the fallen despot in Shelley’s Revolt.

(p. 129)

Although she draws an interesting parallel, Attar fails to acknowledge sectarian differences, presenting a predominantly Shiite version of Islamic history as indisputable fact. Shiite history casts ‘Uthman as a villain, whereas Sunni history describes ‘Uthman as a moral and religious hero, which negates any similarities between him and Shelley’s despot. This omission is surprising as elsewhere Attar demonstrates awareness of historical Islamic factionalism.

In her chapter on Keats, Attar attributes the sensuality of “The Eve of St. Agnes” to Arabic poetry, and draws connections between “Lamia” and Arabic sources. She details plot similarities between The Arabian Nights and “Lamia” and reveals that while critics assume it is of Greek origins, Lamia is also an Arab name, meaning “a woman who has a black-red lip” (p. 72). Attar emphasizes the sensual implications of the name, drawing parallels with the overt sensuality of Keats’s Lamia.

Fascinatingly, Attar likens Byron to a character in the The Arabian Nights, the son of King ‘Umar al-Nu’man...