Reza Taher-Kermani

Expertise:

Literature and Culture of Nineteenth-Century Britain; Literature and Culture of Iran (Persia); Classical Persian Poetry; Anglo-Iranian Cultural Contacts; Poetry and Politics; Modern Iranian Politics; Women's Writings

Languages spoken:

English, Persian (Farsi)

Professional associations:

PhD

I am a scholar of world literature with a primary focus on the engagement between nineteenth-century British literature and culture and the cultures of the non-western world that Britain encountered, traded with, and sometimes ruled in this period. Within this arrangement, I have a particular interest in Anglo-Persian (Iranian) cultural and literary contacts, in the ways in which medieval Persian poetry was received, reproduced, and represented in English poetry of the long nineteenth century.

My first book, The Persian Presence in Victorian Poetry (Edinburgh University Press, 2020) is a study of the manifestations of Persia in Victorian poetry. The book draws on literary, historical, and cross-cultural studies to explore the ways in which Persia, and the multitude of notions associated with it, figure in Victorian poetry. 

My second book project, Women’s Writing and Medieval Persian Poetry, is a study of women’s engagement with Persian literature in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 

I am also currently producing the first critical edition of Edward FitzGerald’s version of Farid ul-din Attar's Mantiq ul-Teyr, which was published posthumously in 1889 with the title "A Bird’s-Eye View of Faríd-Uddín Attar’s Bird-Parliament".

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