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eBook details
- Title: Georgian Terrains: The Islamic Orient in James Elroy Flecker's Hassan (Report)
- Author : Studies in Literature and Language
- Release Date : January 31, 2010
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 89 KB
Description
This paper examines the oriental aspects of Georgian poetry in James Elroy Flecker's Hassan (1922). Doing so, it suggests that Hassan is a medley of Romantic and Parnassian elements (2). What these two schools have in common paves the way for the prevalence of oriental leitmotivs in Georgian poetry in the sense that Hassan celebrates distant places and exotic social behaviours and codes. Dangerfield (1936) considers Flecker's poetic heritage as typical of Georgian poetry (3) (353). He is greatly touched by Parnassian poets, who place more emphasis on the emulation of classical works, mythology, epics, and sagas of distant places like the Orient. Like Parnassian poets, their Romantic counterparts, who have their influence on Flecker, orientally colour their poetry with the supernatural, the occult, and the wonder in the unfamiliar--topos that can be found in that distant Orient. In this context, Thouless (1977) is worth quoting: "The discovery of the East heightened all Flecker's gifts as a poet and confirmed him as a Parnassian; but Flecker was not wholly objective and Parnassian, he was also to some extent a Romantic, for his nature was a divided one" (31). Therefore, Flecker's obsession with topos Arabian and particularly The Arabian Nights (4) comes natural - an obsession that culminates in writing Hassan, which is seen as a revolt against the late-Victorian tediousness in its revival of the dramatic verse (Ross 142) and is historically important for it was published immediately after the 1st World War and simultaneously with modern masterpieces - not the least of which are Virginia Woolfs Mrs. Dalloway, (1922), T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land (1922) and James Joyce's Ulysses (1922). In writing Hassan, Flecker relies on Richard Burton's translated versions of The Arabian Nights, particularly the tale of "Ala Al-Din Abu Al-Shamat." In this sense, it is important to remark that Squire (1916) emphasizes the oriental affinity between Flecker and Burton (xxvii); and Sherwood (1973) reiterates how Flecker was greatly touched by Burton (34, 43). Flecker, to a limited extent, embraces the original source which can be hence added to other famous stories that Scheherazade spins in many Western translations such as "Aladdin's Lamp," "Sinbad the Sailor," and the tale of "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves." In this play, Flecker celebrates the oriental bazaars, places and cities such as Cairo, Damascus and, above all, Baghdad. In addition, oriental figures such as Haroun ar Raschid, Hassan, Ja'far, Ishak, Selim, Rafi, Yasmin and Pervaneh are the prominent characters that appear in the play. It is not surprising that Flecker integrates Islamic, Jewish and Christian characters into Hassan for implicit justifications that will be explored later on. It is therefore worthwhile taking a closer look at religious encounters in Flecker's Hassan.