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Omar sells – American advertisements based on The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, c.1910-1920

Omar sells – American advertisements based on The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, c.1910-1920. Michelle Kaiserlian.
Early Popular Visual Cultur, 60 (2008), nr. 3, p. 257-269.

During the first decades of the twentieth century, a time when modern advertising grew in response to a burgeoning consumer culture, American stores displayed products tied to the name of Omar Khayyám. Motivated by Omariana, the intense response to the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám that contributed to an outpouring of illustrated editions, literary parodies, musical scores and dramatic productions, advertisers found a market ripe for Omar-related consumables and ephemera.

Infinite transformation: The modern craze over the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam in England and America, c. 1900-1930

Infinite transformation: The modern craze over the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam in England and America, c. 1900-1930. Michelle Kaiserlian. Proquest Dissertations and Theses, 2009. Illustrated. 374 p. ISBN: 9781109586534.

Summary
“In the first critical study of the Rubáiyát craze as a whole and as a creative and historical phenomenon, I examine visual and literary responses to the poem in the form of illustrations, parodies, advertisements, and religio- philosophical debates to determine the Rubáiyát’ s overwhelming and enduring resonance in the culture. I argue that people’s engagement with and their myriad responses to the poem performed a kind of cultural work during a period of great social, economic, technological, scientific, and religious upheaval. I demonstrate how the Rubáiyát became a vehicle through which people processed the rapid changes of modern life and how poem and craze alike provided a tool to define and order an increasingly uncertain and fragmented world.“

Contents

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii

INTRODUCTION 1

PROLOGUE 20
The Imagined Elites of the Omar Khayyám Club

CHAPTER ONE 35
In (and Out of) Omar’s Garden: Illustrating the Rubáiyát

Out of the Garden: Taking Omar on Holiday
In an Oriental Garden
The Symbolic Garden

CHAPTER TWO 81
Rubáiyát Parodies and Modern Life: The Omar Cure-all

Defining the Rubáiyát Parody
Nationalism, Fraternity, and the British Rubáiyát Parody
The Other Among Us: Views of Dominance and Compassion
Risky Business and Deviant Behavior: Control and Resistance in the Realm of Leisure
Courtship: Changing Rituals for Modern Life

CHAPTER THREE 133
Consumerism and the Rubáiyát

Too Much and Never Enough: Rubáiyát Mania
Production and Consumption in the Modern Middle Class

CHAPTER FOUR 161
Omar Sells: Advertisements Based on the Rubáiyát

Parody-Advertisements
Advertising Schemes

CHAPTER FIVE 185
The Rubáiyát as Doctrine, or “What Would Omar Do?”

Religious Climate
The Rubáiyát as Doctrine: Problems of Interpretation
In Search of Omar Khayyám
Khayyám’s Skepticism and the Lure of Modern Science
The Question of Immortality
The Triumph of Free Will over Fate

CONCLUSION 223

APPENDIX 228
Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, first and fifth editions

ILLUSTRATIONS 239

BIBLIOGRAPHY 317

CURRICULUM VITAE