The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a collection of Persian poetry translated into English in the 19th century by Edward FitzGerald.
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. In 1859 the poet Edward FitzGerald published a long poem based on the verses of the 11th-century Persian scholar Omar Khayyam. Not a single copy was sold in the first few months after the work's publication, but after it came to the notice of members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood it became enormously influential. Although only loosely based on the original, the Rubaiyat made Khayyam the best-known Eastern poet in the English-speaking world. FitzGerald's version is itself one of the most admired works of Victorian literature, praised and imitated by many later writers.
With:
Charles Melville
Professor of Persian History at the University of Cambridge
Daniel Karlin
Winterstoke Professor of English Literature at the University of Bristol
Kirstie Blair
Professor of English Studies at the University of Stirling
Producer: Thomas Morris.
Last on
LINKS AND FURTHER READING
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READING LIST:
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Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, Victorian Afterlives: The Shaping of Influence in Nineteenth-Century Literature (Oxford University Press, 2002)
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Edward FitzGerald (Daniel Karlin ed.), Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Oxford University Press, 2009)
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Edward FitzGerald (Dick Davis ed.), Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Penguin Classics, 1989)
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Edward FitzGerald (Christopher Decker ed.), Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: A Critical Edition (1997)
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Edward FitzGerald (Tony Briggs ed.), Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Phoenix, 2009)
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Garry Garrard, A Book of Verse: The Biography of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (History Press, 2007)
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Erik Gray, The Poetry of Indifference: From the Romantics to the Rubaiyat (University of Massachusetts Press, 2005)
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Robert Bernard Martin, With Friends Possessed: A Life of Edward FitzGerald (Faber & Faber, 1985)
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William H. Martin and Sandra Mason, Edward Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: A Famous Poem and its Influence (Anthem, 2011)
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William H. Martin and Sandra Mason, The Art of Omar Khayyam: Illustrating FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat (I.B. Tauris, 2007)
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David G. Riede, Allegories of One’s Own Mind: Melancholy in Victorian Poetry (Ohio State University Press, 2005)
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A. A. Seyed-Gohrab (ed.), The Great ‘Umar Khayyam: A Global Reception of the Rubaiyat (Leiden University Press, 2012)
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Alfred McKinley Terhune, The Life of Edward FitzGerald: Translator of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (first edition 1947; Greenwood-Heinemann Publishing, 1980)
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Alfred McKinley Terhune and Annabelle Burdick Terhune (eds.), The Letters of Edward FitzGerald, 4 vols. (Princeton University Press, 1980)
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Credits
| Role | Contributor |
|---|---|
| Presenter | Melvyn Bragg |
| Interviewed Guest | Charles Melville |
| Interviewed Guest | Daniel Karlin |
| Interviewed Guest | Kirstie Blair |
| Producer | Thomas Morris |
Broadcasts
- Thu 22 May 2014 09:00Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4
- Thu 22 May 2014 21:30Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4
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