The influence of Hafiz on Alfred Lord Tennyson

Document Type : Research Paper

10.22111/jllr.2014.1369

Abstract

There have been a lot of studies done on Alfred Lord Tennyson, but the influence of Hafiz, though small, on Tennyson’s work, the poet laureate of England should go unnoticed. A poet like Tennyson influenced by Orientalist discourse, became interested in Hafiz and because of his interest started to learn Hafiz. In Tennyson’s work ancient Iran with all its beauty is present, thus the sources which show Tennyson made use of Hafiz should not be overlooked since these sources can prove the claim of Tennyson’s understanding with Hafiz in this study. Tennyson used many of Hafiz’s themes and motifs in his poetry like the theme of the nightingale and rose; the breeze of the morning; facial features; using nightingale as male and using rose as female; the theme of veil;the theme of garden; the theme of musk;faithfulnessof the lover to beloved even when the lover isdead. The reason behind Tennyson’s Familiarity with Hafiz was the impact of orientalism on poets and writers of nineteenth century. The research methodology of this article is based on French School of Comparative Literature which considers influence and comparison studies and the focus in this study is on the demonstration of the influence of Hafiz on this English poet Laureate.

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References

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Journal of Lyrical Literature Researches
Volume 11, Issue 21 - Serial Number 21
Journal of Lyrical Literature researches
December 2014
Pages 143-162

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