The Afterlife of Edward FitzGerald’s Poem: A Comparative Study of FitzGerald's Rubáiyát and Housman’s A Shropshire Lad

The present paper seeks to address and examine Edward FitzGerald’s globally-known poem afterlife, The Rubáiyát</em>. Translation can serve as a force for literary renewal and innovation. For many years translation was regarded as a marginal area within comparative studies, now it is acknowledged that translation has played a vital role in literary history and great periods of literary innovation tend to be preceded by periods of intense translation activity. The significance of FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát </em>lies in how the poem was read when it appeared and in the precise historical moment when it was published. The impact of FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát </em>was such that on the one hand it served as a model for a new generation of poets struggling to make the skepticism and pessimism a proper subject for poetry, while on the other hand it established a benchmark for future translators because it set the parameters in the minds of English-language readers of what Persian poetry could do. The present chapter tries to show that FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát </em>had a role in forming pre-modern English poetry, notably Housman’s poetry, in terms of form and content. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad</em> and FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát </em>have undeniable similarities.