Contents -- Foreword -- Introduction -- Notes -- The English Romantic Background -- 1. English Romantics and Persian Sufi Poets: A Wellspring of Inspiration for American Transcendentalists -- Platonism in Romantic and Sufi Poetry -- Comparative Persian-English Poetics: Archetypal and Anagogic Criticism -- Anagogic Correspondences Between Sufi and Romantic Poetry -- Carpe Diem -- Nunc Aeternum -- Mundus Imaginalis -- Annihilation, Mystical Death, Fana' -- The Unity of Religions -- Conclusion: Platonic Poetics and the Science of Anagogic Criticism -- Notes -- The Master: Emerson and Sufism -- 2. The Chronological Development of Emerson's Interest in Persian Mysticism -- Notes -- 3. Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Muslim Orient -- Notes -- 4. Emerson and Aspects of Sa'di's Reception in Nineteenth-Century America -- Notes -- 5. Emerson on Hafiz and Sa'di: The Narrative of Love and Wine -- Emerson's Encounter with Persian Literature -- Emerson's Writings on Persian Mystical Literature -- Emerson's Translations from Hafiz -- Echoes of Hafiz's Poems in Emerson's Verse -- Notes -- The Disciple: Walt Whitman -- 6. Whitman and Hafiz: Expressions of Universal Love and Tolerance -- Notes -- 7. Walt Whitman and Sufism: Towards "A Persian Lesson" -- A Song of Myself -- Whitman and Rumi -- Notes -- The Initiates: Other American Authors -- 8. Literary "Masters" in the Literature of Thomas Lake Harris, Lawrence Oliphant, and Paschal Beverly Randolph -- Thomas Lake Harris -- Laurence Oliphant -- Paschal Beverly Randolph -- Conclusions -- Notes -- 9. American Transcendentalists' Interpretations of Sufism: Thoreau, Whitman, Longfellow, Lowell, Melville, and Lafcadio Hearn -- Longfellow, Lowell, Melville, and Lafcadio Hearn -- Notes -- 10. The Persians of Concord -- Notes -- 11. Omarian Poets of America -- The Omar Khayyam Club of America.

The Omarian Poets of New England -- The Ruba'iyyat of Mark Twain -- The Eliots -- Other American Literary Movements and Figures -- Notes -- 12. "Bond Slave to FitzGerald's Omar": Mark Twain and The Rubáiyát -- Notes -- 13. Mark Twain's Ruba'iyyat: AGE-A Rubáiyát -- Note -- Glossary -- Bibliography -- List of Contributors -- Index.