Reza Taher-Kermani, PhD

My research centres on Anglo-Iranian literary exchanges, with a particular focus on how medieval Persian poetry was received and reinterpreted by nineteenth-century British writers. I work at the intersection of comparative literature, translation studies, and postcolonial studies to understand how literary meaning and form travelled across cultures.

My first book, The Persian Presence in Victorian Poetry (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), offers a comprehensive framework for understanding how historical, intellectual, and political entanglements shaped British engagements with Persian literary traditions. I am currently completing my second book, a critical edition of Edward FitzGerald’s Bird-Parliament, his translation of Attar’s Mantiq ul-Teyr, for Oxford University Press. My next book project is a study of the global circulation of the Rubáiyát in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, exploring the book’s impact across Oriental scholarship, translation practices, and fin-de-siècle literary culture.

I have written on literary and historical figures such as Firdausi, Khayyam, Attar, Jami, as well as Edward FitzGerald, Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, and Edward Byles Cowell, and engaged with broader contexts of Anglo-Iranian relations, the cultural politics of empire, and evolving forms of literary Orientalism. My articles have appeared in Essays in Criticism, The Review of English Studies, Translation and Literature, Victorian Literature and Culture, Iranian Studies, and elsewhere.

Education

BA, MA, PhD
University of Sheffield (UK), University of Bristol (UK)

Books

The Bird-Parliament: Edward FitzGerald’s Translation of Attar’s Mantiq ul-Teyr (Oxford University Press, 2026)

The Persian Presence in Victorian Poetry (Edinburgh University Press, 2020)

Peer-Reviewed Articles

“‘The Couplet is the Pearl’: Translating Hafiz through Decadence (in progress)

“‘I Don’t Hear from You’: On Edward Cowell’s Silences and Edward FitzGerald’s Persian Literary Pursuits”, Translation and Literature, 34/1 (2025)

“‘Better a Live Sparrow than a Stuffed Eagle’: On Edward FitzGerald’s ‘Bird-Parliament’”, Essays in Criticism, 72/2 (2022)

“Review Essay: Emerson in Iran: The American Appropriation of Persian Poetry”, Iranian Studies, 54/5-6 (2021)

“Why the Oxus? On the Majestic River of Arnold’s ‘Sohrab and Rustum’”, The Review of English Studies, 69/289 (2018)

“The Rubáiyát: A Labour of Love”, Victoriographies, 7/1 (2017)

“‘A Thin Disguise’: On Robert Browning’s Ferishtah’s Fancies”, Victorian Literature and Culture, 44/2 (2016)

“The Persian Presence in Nineteenth-Century English Poetry: A Taxonomy”, Iranian Studies, 49/1 (2016)

“Persia by Way of Paris: On Matthew Arnold’s ‘Sohrab and Rustum’”, Middle Eastern Literatures, 18/1 (2015)

“FitzGerald’s Anglo-Persian Rubáiyát”, Translation & Literature, 23/3 (2014)

Reviews

Asian Classics on the Victorian Bookshelf: Flights of Translation, Journal of British Studies, 63/4 (2024)

Book Chapters

“Omar Khayyám”, Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism, vol. 239 (Gale, 2023).

Research Interests

World Literature/Comparative Literature
Nineteenth-Century English Literature
Medieval Persian Poetry 
Empire and Colonialism
Sufism and Mystical Traditions in Islam 
Translation Studies

Graduate Seminars Taught
ENGL 665: Medieval Persian Poetry as World Literature
ENGL 621: The Women of Henry James

Undergraduate Seminars Taught
ENGL 454: Literatures of the Middle Eastern Diaspora
ENGL 441: Forms of 18th- and 19th-Century Fiction

Undergraduate Lecture Courses Taught
ENGL 3361: Major Author, 19th Century 
ENGL 3351: Colonialism and Empire in the Victorian period 
ENGL 385: Studies in Postcolonial Literature
ENGL 336: Late Victorian and Edwardian Writing
ENGL 335: Literature of the Victorian Period
ENGL 334: 19th-Century Fiction 
ENGL 333: Studies in 19th-Century British Poetry 
ENGL 332: Studies in 19th-Century British Literature
ENGL 331: 18th- and 19th-Century Writing by Women
ENGL 326: Studies in 18th-Century British Literature
ENGL 262: British Literature from 1660 to 1900
ENGL 260: Introduction to Literary Studies
ENGL 235: Short Fiction