Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: A Critical Edition

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Edward FitzGerald’s translation of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, perhaps the most frequently read Victorian poem and certainly one of the most popular poems in the English language, poses formidable challenges to an editor. FitzGerald compulsively revised his work, alternately swayed by friends’ advice, importuned by his publisher’s commercial interests, and encouraged by public acclaim. In consequence, the editor is faced with four published editions as well as manuscript and proof versions of the poem. ...

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Overview

Edward FitzGerald’s translation of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, perhaps the most frequently read Victorian poem and certainly one of the most popular poems in the English language, poses formidable challenges to an editor. FitzGerald compulsively revised his work, alternately swayed by friends’ advice, importuned by his publisher’s commercial interests, and encouraged by public acclaim. In consequence, the editor is faced with four published editions as well as manuscript and proof versions of the poem. Christopher Decker’s critical edition of the Rubáiyát is the first to publish all extant states of the poem and to unearth a full record of its complicated textual evolution.

Decker supplies a rich interpretive context for the Rubáiyát that reveals how its composition was so often a collaborative enterprise. His view of poetic creativity comprehends recent theories of the sociology of texts and challenges the common assumption that the desired product of a critical edition is a single unified text of a literary work. He illuminates the complex process of revision by providing a textual appendix in which a comparative printing lays down each stratum of FitzGerald’s composition. Biographical and textual introductions, making imaginative use of FitzGerald’s correspondence, trace the history of the poem and pay special attention to FitzGerald’s motives for revising, for creating a variously beautiful work in verse.

This definitive edition of the Rubáiyát will be of special interest to scholars and students of Victorian poetry, publishing history, verse translation, literary imitation, and revision. And readers for whom the poem is an old acquaintance will here find fresh ways to appreciate its strengths and finesse.

University of Virginia Press

Omar Khayyam (1048-1122) was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who was not known as a poet in his lifetime. These verses lay in obscurity until 1859, when FitzGerald published a free adapation of this Persian poetry. As a result, The Rubaiyat became one of the best-known and most often quoted English classics.

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Editorial Reviews

Yale Review
Christopher Decker has come forward with a splendid critical edition of the poem, containing FitzGerald’s introductory essay and notes to each version. It prints all four printed versions along with manuscript variants and, most usefully indeed, appends a comparative version in which each quatrain appears in a column with its variants keyed to their order of placement in the four editions as well as revised copy- and proof-texts for that of 1872.

— John Hollander

Yale Review - John Hollander

"Christopher Decker has come forward with a splendid critical edition of the poem, containing FitzGerald’s introductory essay and notes to each version. It prints all four printed versions along with manuscript variants and, most usefully indeed, appends a comparative version in which each quatrain appears in a column with its variants keyed to their order of placement in the four editions as well as revised copy- and proof-texts for that of 1872.

Nineteenth-Century Literature

"A model of contemporary textual scholarship.

Nineteenth-Century Literature

"A model of contemporary textual scholarship.

Yale Review - John Hollander

"Christopher Decker has come forward with a splendid critical edition of the poem, containing FitzGerald’s introductory essay and notes to each version. It prints all four printed versions along with manuscript variants and, most usefully indeed, appends a comparative version in which each quatrain appears in a column with its variants keyed to their order of placement in the four editions as well as revised copy- and proof-texts for that of 1872.

Booknews
Fitzgerald compulsively revised his translation of the "Rub<'a>iy<'a>t," resulting in four published editions, all of which are presented here with their original prefaces and notes, along with all extant versions of FitzGerald's translation. Decker supplies biographical and textual introductions that make use of FitzGerald's correspondence to seek motives for his revisions, the aim being to to unearth a full record of the poem's textual evolution, to provide an interpretive context, and to illuminate the complex process of revision. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780813916897
  • Publisher: University of Virginia Press
  • Publication date: 2/28/1997
  • Series: Victorian Literature and Culture Series
  • Pages: 258
  • Product dimensions: 6.40 (w) x 9.34 (h) x 1.25 (d)

Meet the Author

Christopher Decker is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He has also published articles on allusion, literary influence, the history of reading, and appropriations of Shakespeare in Victorian poetry and culture.

University of Virginia Press

Christopher Decker is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He has also published articles on allusion, literary influence, the history of reading, and appropriations of Shakespeare in Victorian poetry and culture.

University of Virginia Press

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