He was born in March 1938 in Shabas Al Shuhadaa village in mid Delta region, Egypt.
He received his primary and intermediate education in Azharite institutes.
He received his Bachelor’s degree from the Faculty of Dar Al Uloom, Cairo University in 1962.
After graduation, he worked as a teaching assistant at the Faculty of Dar Al Uloom until 1965.
He was granted a postgraduate scholarship in Spain, where he obtained a Ph.D. degree in Literature from the Central University of Madrid in 1972.
During his study period abroad, he taught Arabic literature and translation at the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts in Madrid University during the period from 1968 to 1972.
During the same period, he worked with the Supreme Council for Scientific Research in Spain on a project aiming to revive and promote the philosophical legacy of Averroes (Ibn Rushd).
After his return from Spain, he worked as a Professor of Literature and Criticism at the Faculty of Arabic Language and Girls College in Al Azhar University.
He served as Visiting Professor at Mexico College for Higher Studies from 1974 to 1977.
He established the Arabic Language and Literature Department at the National Independent University of Mexico in 1975.
He was part of the Higher Executive Committee of the Orientalist Conference in Mexico in 1974.
He was Professor of Literary Criticism and Comparative Literature at Ain Shams University since 1979.
He was appointed as Egypt’s Cultural Consultant in Spain and Director of the Egyptian Institute of Islamic Studies in Madrid, Spain, between 1980 and 1985.
During this period he was Editor-in-Chief of the magazine of the Egyptian Institute of Islamic Studies in Madrid.
He was named Honorary Professor for Higher Studies at the National Independent University of Mexico.
He was named an Honorary Member of the Spanish Historical Academic Society.
After his return to Egypt, he was appointed Dean of the Higher Institute for Literary Criticism in the Academy of Arts in Egypt from 1985 to 1988.
He was a visiting professor at Sanaa University, Yemen and at the University of Bahrain till 1995.
He helped establish the Egyptian Association for Literary Criticism and served as its Deputy Chairperson since 1989.
He was a member of the Supreme Council for Culture and Media of the Specialized National Councils.
He was a member of the Higher Scientific Committee for Faculty Promotion.
He was a Board Member of the Egyptian Writers Union.
He contributed to many literary criticism conferences in Egypt, Spain and Bahrain and participated in most Arab academic symposiums.
He supervised a number of book series in the Egyptian General Book Authority such as “Dirasat Adabiyya” (Literary Studies) and “Nuqqad Al Adab” (Literary Critics).
he was elected a member of the Academy of the Arabic Language in 2003, and became its president in 2020. He received several awards locally and internationally, most notably the State Appreciation Award in Literature, the Nile Award in Literature, the Owais Award for Literary Studies and Criticism, and the Al-Babtain Prize for Poetry Criticism.
Important Publications:
“Medieval Spanish Poetry: A Study and Examples” (1974)
“The Realistic Approach in Literary Innovation” (1978)
“Structuralist Theory in Literary Criticism” (1978)
“The Impact of Islamic Culture on Dante’s Divine Comedy” (1980)
“Stylistics: Its Principals and Proceedings” (1984)
“Producing Literary Stylistics” (1987)
“The Mughazi Morisco Epic” (1988)
“Text Codes: Semiological Research” (1989)
“Trends of Spanish Theatre” (1992)
“Narrative Techniques in the Arabic Novel” (1993)
“The Eloquence of Discourse and Textology” (1993)
“Contemporary Poetic Techniques” (1995)
“Forms of Imagination: Fragments of Life and Literature” (1995)
“Approaches of Contemporary Criticism” (1996)
“Reading Images and Forms of Reading” (1996)
” Critical Views of Contemporary Fiction” (1997)
“Tones of Critical Discourse” (1998)
“Critical Formations Against the Death of the Author” (2000)
“The Poeticity of Narration” (2002)
“Transformations of Arab Poeticity” (2002)
“The Sea Flower and the Freedom of the Female Imagination” (2004)
“Discussions of Literary Thought” (2004)
“Aesthetics of Freedom in Poetry”
“The Joy of Experimentation in Fiction Writing” (2005)
Al – Azhar documents. What Appeared and What Belly, "Alternative Publishing and Distribution House, Giza, 2017
Salah Fadl passed away on 10 December, 2022.
