Wajih Fanous

Mohammed Wajih Sobhi Fanous (known as Wajih Fanous, ; 1948 – 13 July 2022) was a Lebanese literary critic, academic, and researcher. He wrote about twenty books, featuring literary criticism, cultural heritage, Islamic civilization, and contemporary themes. Some of his works have been translated into French. He held a number of cultural, intellectual, and academic positions and was honored on several occasions.

Early life Muhammad Wajih Subhi Fanous was born in Burj Abi Haidar, a neighborhood of Beirut, in 1948, and his father, Sobhi, was one of the Qabban money dealers. He received his first studies in the schools of the Al-Maqasid Islamic Charitable Association (Othman Dhi Al-Nurin Elementary and Ali Bin Abi Talib High School), and graduated from high school in 1967 from Raml Al-Zarif Official High School in Beirut. He completed his higher education at the Lebanese University in the specialization of Arabic language and literature, and educational sciences from the College of Education, and obtained a degree of proficiency (masters) in the specialization of Arabic language and literature in 1973. The subject of his thesis was titled "Omar Zaani and His Poetry."

He was elected at that stage as a member of the Student Branch Council in the College of Education from 1969 to 1971. He also continued to study history and archeology in the College of Arts and Humanities at the Lebanese University. As a result of his excellence, he obtained a scholarship to pursue his graduate studies at the University of Oxford in England. He was the first student from the Lebanese University to be accepted into this university. He graduated with a PhD in Literary Criticism, obtaining a PhD in Comparative Literary Criticism from St. Anthony's College, Oxford in 1980. The subject of his doctoral thesis was "Aspects of the Lebanese Contribution to Modern Arabic Literary Criticism." During his studies in England, he was elected the first secretary of the Lebanese Students' Union in Britain and Northern Ireland from 1975 to 1979. Upon his return to Lebanon, he was appointed a lecturer at the Lebanese University until his retirement. including presiding over the Cultural Dialogue Panel and the Lebanese Writers Union, He also chaired the Islamic Cultural Center، the National Action Symposium، and Mahmoud Darwish's chair at the Modern University for Business and Science.

He has written dozens of articles and studies in both Arabic and English, published in specialized Arab and Western periodicals, in addition to literary, cultural, educational and social seminars and lectures in a large number of specialized and public forums in Lebanon and the Arab world.

Fanous, by virtue of his academic specialization in literary criticism, and comparative literary criticism in particular, and the worlds of what is called "beyond criticism", was interested in his academic research, in the narrow sense of specialization, and was interested in the academic dimension of literary criticism; however, he has always addressed the general public by pursuing the fields of cultural criticism in his writings and other works in the general cultural spheres. This does not mean, at all, as he said in an interview with him:

"Cultural criticism is not included in the domain of academia, but this time it is the academic fold that does not view literary material as merely rigid linguistic, rhetorical or synthetic entities, but rather as a complex product that arises from the interaction of many cognitive and cultural matters of culture as elements of human living of thought, expression and beauty, in between."

Lebanese Writers Union Fanous was elected Secretary General of the Lebanese Writers Union in 2015, and Vice President of the Arab Writers Union,

Death Fanous died on 13 July 2022, at the age of 74 in Beirut.

Works Fanous has several writings, studies and research papers, and books published in both Arabic and English, including:

1988: 1991: 1992: Adventures In Literary Criticism 1993: 1995: 1996: 1998: (three parts, secondary education; co-author) 1998: A Collection Of Literary Studies 2001: 2003: 2004: 2012: 2012: Ameen Rihani’s Arab American Legacy: From Romanticism To Postmodernism (co-author) 2014:

Radio works He also wrote several radio and drama programs, including: