Islam as Imagined in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century English Literature

Clinton Bennett is a British American scholar of religion and an ordained Baptist clergyperson who focuses on Christian-Muslim relations. A graduate of Birmingham, Manchester and Oxford Universities his Birmingham PhD was awarded in 1990 for a thesis on Victorian images of Islam. A Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and of the Royal Anthropological Institute, he has lived and worked in Australia, Bangladesh, Britain and the USA. Author of twelve books, he has participated in Interfaith relations locally, nationally and globally through the World Council of Churches and other organizations. In the USA, he represents the Alliance of Baptists in several bilateral dialogues. Currently teaching Religious Studies at the State University of New York at New Paltz, his previous posts include director of Interfaith Relations for the British Council of Churches, senior lecturer at Westminster College, Oxford, and associate professor at Baylor University, TX.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Aim, Scope, Historical Background, Current Literature and Terminology.

Chapter One: Islamic References in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century English Literature

Chapter Two: The Eighteenth Century: A New Genre (Pseudo-Oriental Literature)

Chapter Three: Eighteenth Century Plays, Novels and Poems with Orientalist Settings or Allusions

Chapter Four: Islam as Imagined by Romantic writers in the Nineteenth Century.

Chapter Five: Views of the Orient and of Islam from Outside the British Metropole.

Chapter Six: Liminality and the Representation of Islam and the Orient

Conclusion: Becoming Comfortable with Difference in 21st Century America

Index