Antun Saadeh: The literary critic at the centre of national identity.

Discussant: Dr. Thomas Scheffler (OIB research associate)

Abstract

Antun Saadeh is best known for founding the Syrian Social Nationalist Party and for producing a series of volumes on Syrian nationalism that looked comprehensively at the administration and political fabric of the Syrian state. However, he was also an incisive literary critic and author whose views on the Arabic literary renaissance (al-nahḍa) defied conventional scholarly approaches to modern Arabic literature, prioritising a narrative of autochthonous Syrian literary development and radically altering the terms in which Arabic literature engaged with western intellectual ideas. As well as producing an abundance of ideas on the essential purpose and usefulness of literature, Saadeh’s prodigious output also reveals a great deal to us about the mechanics of the literary process, especially the means of literary distribution.

This seminar looks at these issues while asking further questions about the importance of Saadeh’s inherited identity to his literary ideas.

Bio

Alyn Hine is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Orient-Institut Beirut where he is undertaking research into the cultural identity of Antiochian Orthodox Christians in Lebanon. Formerly a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, Alyn Hine wrote his doctoral thesis at SOAS on the presence of Russian literature in the works of Mikhail Naimy and continues to research links between Arabic and Russian literature.

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