Although considerable scholarly attention has been paid to US Orientalism in the nineteenth century, there remains no targeted study of the formative influence exercised by the Qur'an upon the canon of early American literature. The present paper surveys receptions, adaptations and translations of the Qur'an during the ‘American Renaissance’, identifying the Qur'anic echoes which permeate the seminal works of literary patriarchs such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe. Examining the literary and religious tensions raised by antebellum importations of Islamic scripture, the essay interrogates how the aesthetic contours of the Qur'an in particular serve both to attract and obstruct early US readings, mapping the diverse responses to the Muslim sacred generated by American Romantics and Transcendentalists.
A Road Course in Early American Literature: Travel and Teaching from Aztlán to Amherst by Thomas Hallock (A Book Review)
