Islam and Romantic Orientalism: Literary Encounters with the Orient

Did European writers and scholars create an image of the Islamic world as a place of tyranny, unreason and immorality destined to be subjected to and exploited by the civilized West? This book takes a fresh look at some of the main literary texts of the Romantic movement explored in Edward Said's classic work. Sharafuddin acknowledges wide areas of truth in Said's thesis, however, he argues that in the work of Southey, Byron, Moore and Landor, who began their careers under the sign of the French Revolution and declared their independence both from political tryanny and from national self-safisfaction, the world of Islam appears not just as an antithesis to the world of European civilization but as an alternative cultural reality with its own values.