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Forgetting FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát

Forgetting FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát. Erik Gray.
In: Edward FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Ed. by H. Bloom. Philadelphia, Chelsea House, 2004. p. 209-226.
(From SEL 41 (2001), nr. 4 (Autumn), p. 765-793.)

Gray argues that critics seem to have taken Fitzgerald at his word, who constantly advises in the Rubaiyat to ‘forget’. After a brief discussion of Tennyson’s poetry (also very concerned with the question of memory), Gray moves to examine the formal means Fitzgerald uses to efface his poem from the reader’s memory. Considering the poem’s publication history, the author suggests that “readers have never forgotten the Rubaiyat paradoxically because they are unable to remember it precisely”. “The poem is forgetful, or at least absent-minded, at every level: the rendition of the Persian, the rhymes, the quatrains, the different editions – all simultaneously recollect and efface dead selves.”

Common and queer: syntax and sexuality in the Rubáiyát

Common and queer: syntax and sexuality in the Rubáiyát. Erik Gray.
In: FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Popularity and Neglect. Cambridge, Anthem Press, 2011. pp. 27–44.

Gray contends that FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát originally achieved its giddy popularity because it seemed so strange and daring, yet the poem’s very familiarity has tended to obscure what is most exceptional about it, its often puzzling language and its depiction of relations between men.

Much ado about nothing in the Rubáiyát

Much ado about nothing in the Rubáiyát. D. Karlin.
In: FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Popularity and neglect. Ed. by A. Poole et al. London, Anthem Press, 2011. pp. 115-26.

Karlin probes the metaphysical gap between FitzGerald’s idea of ‘nothing’ and Tennyson’s, tracing the antecedents of the former in an English literary tradition that includes Shakespeare, Donne, and Rochester.

A literary study of Edward FitzGerald …

A literary study of Edward FitzGerald, accompanied by an edition of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, with notes and critical commentary. Kenneth Angyal. Detroit, Wayne State University, 1974.

Death Deemed Undead. The Fragility of Life and the Theme of Mortality and Melancholia In Omar Khayyam’s ‘Rubaiyat’

Death Deemed Undead. The Fragility of Life and the Theme of Mortality and Melancholia In Omar Khayyam’s ‘Rubaiyat’. Abhik Maiti.
American Research Journal on English and Literature. [2018, in Press]

Summary

he term “Vairagya” refers to a deeply ruminative cynicism arising out of wisdom, knowledge and awareness about the ways of the world especially its perplexing transience and man’s search for meaning in the grand scheme of things. No other topic engenders as much vairagic thinking as does the imponderability of life’s purpose, its relevance and meaning. The manifestation of this thinking can be seen in prose tracts, poetry, schools of philosophy, expositions, sayings and aphorisms. Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat belongs to this manifestation. With death as the final and unyielding reality it was but natural for Omar Khayyam to bring out the perplexing nature of human existence and passions there in for questioning in his rubai.

Study of Socratic Irony and Romantic Irony in Khayyam, Abol-ala and Schopenhauer’s Quatrains

Study of Socratic Irony and Romantic Irony in Khayyam, Abol-ala and Schopenhauer’s Quatrains. Ahmad Forouzanfar, Shahla Khalilollahi, Maryam Mousavi.
In: International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature, Sept. 2019. Pp. 72-76.

Summary:
In this article we are determined to review Socratic irony, romantic and ironic structures of Khayyam’s quatrains and the ones attributed to him and explain the place of Khayyam as an ironist among other thinkers of the world, according to the meaning of romantic irony and Socratic irony in his quatrains.