Table of Contents

Introduction
Iran in Nineteenth-Century France: Competing Narratives
Iran and Orientalism
Beyond the Paradigm of Difference
The Politics of Genre

Chapter 1: Poetry
Translation and Poetic Innovation
From Paris to ‘Persia’ and Back Again (Hugo, Théophile Gautier, Noailles)
Persian Poems Made in France (Renaud, Lahor/Cazalis)
Intertextuality and Universalism: The Case of ‘Les Roses de Saadi’ (Desbordes-Valmore)
Conclusion

Chapter 2: History and Historical Fiction
Rewriting Human History
‘Nos parents, les Aryas’ (Arthur de Gobineau, Ernest Renan, Jules Michelet)
The Persian Alexander: Hybridity and Queer (Anti-)Imperialism (Judith Gautier)
Ancient History? Iran as Mirror for French Feminism (Jane Dieulafoy)
Conclusion

Chapter 3: Travel-Writing
‘Tout chemin ne conduit pas en Perse’
Defining the Persians
Among Women: Scenes from the Harem
Understanding Shiism
‘Esfahan, Nesf-e Jahan’
Remembering ‘the Great of the Earth’
Plagued by the West
Books versus Reality
Conclusion

Chapter 4: Performing Arts
Orientalism and the Stage
A Tale of Two Peris : Iran, the Imaginary Orient, and Ballet (Théophile Gautier, Paul Dukas)
Of Poets, Prophets, and Kings: French Opera’s love affair with Iranian men (Lalla Roukh, Le Mage, and Thamara)
A Puppet Play about Omar Khayyam (Maurice Bouchor)
Rebuilding Susa: Jane Dieulafoy and Camille Saint-Saëns’s ‘Parysatis’ (1902)
Conclusion

Conclusion

Promotional Information

The first study of the reception of Iranian culture, history, and literature in 19th -century France, including lyric poetry, history and historical fiction, travel-writing and the performing arts.

About the Author

Julia Hartley is a Lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of Glasgow. She was previously Laming Fellow at the Queen’s College Oxford and Edward W. Said Visiting Fellow at Columbia University. She is the author of Reading Dante and Proust by Analogy (2019) and peer-reviewed articles in Iranian Studies and Nineteenth-Century French Studies.

Reviews

Clever, exciting, timely: Julia Hartley’s wonderful book completely reinvents the way we think about Iran and France. By revealing the vast array of devices, ideas, styles, and writing that are all too often dismissed as mere “Orientalism “, she demonstrates Iran’s exemplary place at the heart of nineteenth century literary, historical, musical, and cultural production. She takes us on marvelous trajectories that show how Oriental themes are good to think with in the strong literary sense, and that figures as varied as Hugo, Gautier, Michelet, Dieulafoy, Dukas, and Bibesco aren’t just responding to or participating in imperialism; they are also reckoning with Iran’s rich literary heritage and each other.
*Ziad Elmarsafy, Professor, University of St Andrews, UK*

Hartley’s new book makes a resounding case for the specificity of Iran as perceived and instrumentalised within nineteenth-century French discourse. Written in an elegantly lucid style, this is an important contribution to French transcultural studies that significantly nuances any notion of a monolithic Orientalism.
*Jennifer Yee, Professor, University of Oxford, UK*

[The] work is a thought-provoking read with a lot of important material and does much to open up the study of Orientalism to new sources and perspectives.
*French Studies Journal*