Islam as Imagined in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century English Literature

Since medieval times, English literature has often demonized Muslims. The term ’Islamophobia’ is recent, but the phenomenon is old. This survey of literature focusing on the modern period up to 1914 identifies negative ideas about Islam in novels and plays. Some works are iconic, some more obscure. However, the book highlights writers who challenged stereotypes and tended to see Muslims as equally capable of virtue and vice as Christians and others. The book deals with the role of the imagination in depicting others and how this serves authors’ agendas. The conclusion brings the book’s thesis into dialogue with the debate in the USA today between supporters of multiculturalism and its critics. Anyone interested in how stereotypes are formed, perpetuated and can be challenged will profit from this book. It is aimed at a non-specialist readership.

Clinton Bennett is a British American scholar of religion and an ordained Baptist clergyperson who focuses on Christian-Muslim relations. A graduate of Birmingham, Manchester and Oxford Universities his Birmingham PhD was awarded in 1990 for a thesis on Victorian images of Islam. A Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and of the Royal Anthropological Institute, he has lived and worked in Australia, Bangladesh, Britain and the USA. Author of twelve books, he has participated in Interfaith relations locally, nationally and globally through the World Council of Churches and other organizations. In the USA, he represents the Alliance of Baptists in several bilateral dialogues. Currently teaching Religious Studies at the State University of New York at New Paltz, his previous posts include director of Interfaith Relations for the British Council of Churches, senior lecturer at Westminster College, Oxford, and associate professor at Baylor University, TX.