Reza Taher-Kermani, PhD

My research centres on two main areas: medieval (classical) Persian poetry as world literature and nineteenth-century British literature and culture, with a particular emphasis on the comparative dynamics through which Persian poetry was received, represented, and reimagined in English literary writing over the long nineteenth century.  

My work in this field includes the monograph, The Persian Presence in Victorian Poetry (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), as well as peer-reviewed articles and review essays published in Essays in Criticism, The Review of English Studies, Victorian Literature and Culture, Iranian Studies, Translation and Literature, Middle Eastern Literatures, Journal of British Studies, and Victoriographies.   

My first book, The Persian Presence in Victorian Poetry, explores the complex imaginative geography of “Persia” in the nineteenth century by tracing how historical, intellectual, and political entanglements informed British literary engagements with Persian themes and texts. 

My research engages modern critical approaches, particularly postcolonialism and decoloniality, while remaining rooted in a comparative methodology that moves across languages, periods, and genres. In recent years, I have written on figures such as Firdausi, Omar Khayyam, Attar, Hafiz, Jami, Edward FitzGerald, Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, Edward Byles Cowell, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and addressed broader contexts including the reception of Persian poetry in Britain and America, Anglo-Iranian relations, the cultural politics of the “Great Game”, translation and adaptation, and the evolving dynamics of literary Orientalism.  

I am currently preparing, for Oxford University Press, the first critical edition of Edward FitzGerald’s Bird-Parliament, his translation of Attar’s Mantiq ul-Teyr.

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, forthcoming 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