LTEXA 02: Telling and Retelling: Approaching the Religious Narrative of Joseph

Telling and Retelling: Approaching the Religious Narrative of Joseph

Ahmed Meliebary
The University of Nottingham

This study looks into two pieces of two religious scripture, one taken from the Holy book of Muslims, the Quran, which pervades Islamic literature, and the other from the Bible, which is another masterpiece of literature. An internal analysis of the Quranic and Biblical pieces provides a fuller understanding of both versions and eventually some narrative aspects of both Books. This study conducted a comparative stylistic analysis based on issues that are important to the narratives in hand such as narratology, repetition, the mode of discourse, and other closely related features including narrator, voice, and linguistic subjectivity. Important features of narrative have been applied on two selected excerpts of relatively matching scenes. One narratological model/approach has been applied for elucidating the biblical material in the Quranic one, which not only enhances the understanding of the relationship between the Two Books, but also reflects on the art of Quranic and Biblical narratives.

The components of such an approach has been assembled from several analytical strategies, among which are the work of narrative versions, narrative and speech act theories. The literary structure of the story has been investigated because of its impact on the whole framework of analysis for both books. Providing an insight into the shape of both narratives, leads to important implications for the study of the relationship between the Quran and the Bible which is one of the sought after objectives of this work, and that will hopefully lead to positive results in correcting the imbalance that usually informs Quran-Bible comparisons, and help in providing a common ground of tolerance and understanding for peoples of both faiths.

ISBN 9783895869341. LINCOM Textual Analyses 02. 210pp. 2010.