The Well-Trodden Path / British Muslim Nature Writing

This creative-critical PhD is concerned with the writing of 'British Muslim Nature Writing', studying its forgotten history and exploring its place in the contemporary 'cultures of nature'. Taking a diachronic approach, the starting point of the critical study will be Romanticism, the period considered to be the foundation of anglophonenature writing. I will explore the influence of Islam on Romantic notions of nature through the Romantic reading of Islamic texts and then subsequently trace this influence across nature writing as a genre that has been characterised as 'post-Romantic' (Abberly et al). In doing so, I will re-evaluate the roots of Romantic attitudes towards the natural world, then turn to works on nature by British Muslim writers, from the convert community in Victorian Liverpool to twenty first century writers. The critical work will inform my own creative non-fiction, a work of contemporary British nature writing working with Islamic traditions.