Reem Abbas, Jesus

Biographical Information

I studied for my BA in English Language and Literature at Bilkent University (Hons.), and then came to Cambridge for my M.Phil. in Modern and Contemporary Literature (Distinction) which was funded by the Rowan Williams Cambridge Studentship (Cambridge Trust). I'm now doing my Ph.D. in Modern and Contemporary Literature with the help of an Allen, Meek, and Read International Scholarship (CT). 

My PhD explores the Persian literary and artistic influences on Basil Bunting's late poetry following the time that he spent in Iran as an interpreter, vice-consul, and Times correspondent. My BA and M.Phil. dissertations have thus far studied the importance of Bunting's modernist translations (loose, literal, imaginative) from classical Persian into English and his principle of condensation ('DICHTEN=CONDENSARE'). My Ph.D. expands on this work and is particularly interested in the influence of classical Persian arts (geometry, carpets, and miniatures), music, and the Arabo-Persian 'bait' on his later works, especially the post-1940 odes, 'The Spoils' (1951) and Briggflatts (1965).

Research Interests

Late nineteenth-century literature; twentieth-century literature; British and global Modernism(s); poetry and poetics; translation studies; comparative literatures; contemporary poetry; migration and diaspora literatures; bi-/multi-lingualism; literatures in or from Arabic and, tentatively, classical and modern Persian.