A Life in Praise of Words

This book assembles for the first time a broad range of international scholarship on one of the leading figures of 19th-century Arabic letters, Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq (1804−1887), considering biographical, philological, aesthetical, and historical perspectives. A Life in Praise of Words addresses the central motif of this eccentric polymath, whose entire literary, publicist and scholarly oeuvre bears witness to the author’s striving for a new language that would be adequate for the cultural and social needs of his time. The essays analyze al-Shidyaq’s life, thought, and literary output, all of which were deeply influenced by the lifelong experience of exile and social marginality, alternating with dependence on major political figures of the century. If both his biography and his oeuvre mark al-Shidyaq as vanguard author, the present volume explores the reasons for his long lasting misrecognition and late inclusion into the canon of the Arab nahda, focusing in particular on his biography and on his literary masterpiece al-Saq ͑ala al-saq.