Selected bibliography of FitzGerald criticism, 1959-2008.
Victorian Poetry, 46 (2008), nr 1, p. 15-17.
The list includes the major critical contributions of the last fifty years. It does not include notes or short articles, nor the many editions of FitzGerald’s work, several of which contain very useful critical introductions.
The benefits of reading the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam as pastoral. Giuseppe Albano.
Victorian Poetry, 46 (2008), nr 1, p. 55-67.
On the publication of J. B. Nicolas’ French translations of Omar Khayyam –collected in book form as Les quatrains de Kheyam in 1867, having initially appeared in the Revue de l’Orient, de l’Algerie et des Colonies four years earlier–Edward FitzGerald was provoked into a caustic disagreement with its translator. The Frenchman held that Omar’s testaments to the benefits of drinking wine should not be taken literally, but should be seen in Sufi terms as representing an enlightened state of being.
Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat – an Antidote for Islamic Fundamentalism. N. Berdichevsky.
New English Review, (2007) November.
Omar Khayyam (1044-1123) was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, and mystic. His reputation was for a time highly regarded in Iran under the regime of the last Shah but by and large he has been held either in ignominy, contempt, total disregard or intentional oblivion by almost the entire Muslim world, and especially the Arab countries and his native Iran, ruled today by the clique of fanatical mullahs who represent the very targets of bigotry, asceticism and ignorance his verses derided in The Rubaiyat.
Strategies of appropriation: Khayyam and Rumi. F. Farahzad.
In: Translation Studies 4 (2006), pp. 44-52.
This paper attempts to explore the issue of representation by focusing on two major translations of Persian poetry and literature, one produced in mid 19th century and the other produced in late 20th century.
Orientalist and liberating discourses of East-West difference – Revisiting Edward Said and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Mohammad Tamdgidi.
The Discourse of sociological practice 7 (2005), nrs. 1&2 (Spring/Fall), p. 187-201.
The article focuses on the text of Professor Edward Said with regards to the use of East-West difference. The author presents an argument that distinguishes the literary and political rhetoric of Said and the substantive point he made with regards to East-West difference and orientalism. According to the view of Said, human history is a history of constant reciprocity and exchange of ideas and influences across cultures and traditions.
Edward Fitzgerald and Other Men’s Flowers: Allusion in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Christopher Decker.
Literary Imagination 6 (2004) 2, pp. 213-239.
One of the most arresting images called to mind in Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is that of the corpus redivivum, the buried corpse that turns to flowers gently in the grave. The body’s separate members suffer a metamorphosis into other objects that recompose and recollect their bygone looks. Khayyám reflects: I sometimes think that never blows so red The Rose as where some buried Cæsar bled; That every Hyacinth the Garden wears Dropt in its Lap from some once lovely Head. (XVIII)
William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and ‘The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám’. Michaela Braesel.
Apollo (2004), (February)
Braesel discusses the manuscript designs by the British artists William Morris (1834-96) and Edward Burne-Jones (1893-98) for The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám which was translated in 1859 by Edward Fitzgerald. The author notes that two copies of the manuscript can be differentiated by Burne-Jones’s involvement in the designs, details Morris’s biographer Mackail’s account of the colour scheme adopted for the patterns in the manuscript, and compares the second version of the `Ynglings’ manuscript with patterns on the London manuscript for The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. She notes Morris’s interest in designs featuring female musicians, traces the history of the small manuscript format, and examines Morris and Burne-Jones’s reasons for avoiding illustrating the dramatic segments of the text.