Thomas Moore’s Lalla Rookh: Iran and Ireland a Sororal Reflection in light of Irish Orientalism

The West-East love affair and especially with the Persian empire has always been thesame, following one unflinching ethos: the former Hellenizes the latter and, as a result,remodeling it either by injecting an inherently western trajectory into the core of theEast, or by philosophizing and then reevaluating its national, ideological and culturalgrand narratives.By exploring Thomas Moore’s Lalla Rookh (1817) as the main point of departure forcultural interventions in the orient, especially Persia or the land of Ēran or Aryāns as aconspicuous source of insight, and crisscross my reading of Moore’s colonial look at Iranwith Joyce’s subtle reading of oriental subjects and orientalism this article examines theways in which the West has historically been re-introducing a different East in the form ofan exotic Orient to not only its local audience but those abroad. To this end, this articlewill introduce and then instrumentalize the concept of Essentialist Irish Orientalism toshed light on an ever-growing interest of the West to meet and re-evaluate the East in thegeneral and Iran in particular. Hence, the paper will first engage with an Irish orientalistreading of the East, especially Iran, by drawing upon theories of Said, Deleuze, Freudand Fanon.