Narrative Techniques in the Holy Qur’an with Special
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Date
2008-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Citing Mustansir (2000:4), Sulaiman (2003:1) argues that, “The Qur’an like the Bible, is
an acknowledged literary masterpiece .But unfortunately, it has not yet received the kind
of attention that the Bible acquires”. As a result, the Holy Qur’an is understood as a
spiritual scripture only. Thus, it is wrongly perceived that this book is endowed with a lot
of hard and fast religious rules and regulations.
However, even though spirituality is one aspect of the Holy Qur’an, it is also full of
narrative techniques and devices. Referring to Mustansir (2000:3), Rukiya (2004:3)
states that the Holy Qur’an, “…tells stories, cites parables, uses figurative speech, and
draws character sketches...” Therefore, the main objective of this thesis is to explore
these techniques and avoid the misconception people developed towards the scripture.
In order to explore such narrative techniques as narrative voice, narrative time, narrative
modes and, character and characterization, related literatures in the area, are reviewed
from various source materials to enrich the thesis with theoretical ideas and concepts.
More importantly, five sample chapters (Surahs) are selected from the Qur’an as
narrative texts for practical analysis. In these five chapters, analysis is made to find out
the identity of the narrator (author’s voice). And again, narrative time is explored. This
means that analysis is made to know whether the episodes of the five chapters are in
chronological order or not, to clearly distinguish the proportion between the story time
and the discourse time and to recognize how often events are repeated compared to their
occurrence.
Moreover, those five chapters are also seen from the perspective of their presentations.
This is to say that individual chapters are treated to differentiate whether they are
presented in summary or scenic modes. Lastly, the personality traits of characters in
those chapters are depicted. In the last chapter conclusion is made based on the
analysis that has been done.
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Keywords
the Holy Qur’an