Haverford College

Distinguished
Visitors talk by Émilie Picherot, Associate Professor
of Comparative Literature

University of Lille, France

"Arabic language and Renaissance
humanism:  a familiar otherness"

Tuesday, February 21, 2023 at 4:30 pm

Lutnick Library,
Room 200

Abstract:
Humanism, as a major current of early-modern European thought, is based on
education.  Resisting the essential invariants of theological teaching,
humanism teaches human individuality and its infinite variations.  How
does this lesson of Renaissance humanism apply to issues of otherness and of
language?  The example of Arabic language infuses this question with a
powerful emotion and a powerful idea.  The emotion is fear of conversion
to another religion, because Arabic is associated in the Renaissance with
Islam.  The idea is that of familiar otherness, because Arabic and Islam
are known and studied in Western Europe before and after the fall of Granada in
1492.  Therefore, in order to understand these engagements with Arabic
language and Islamic religion, we must move beyond the usual notions of
exoticism and strangeness.

Sponsored by the
Departments of French and Francophone Studies & Comparative Literature.