This book approaches the Qur’ān as a literary, religious and oral text that affects its audience, drawing on narratology, rhetoric and Qur’ānic studies to develop a new methodology to analyze stories that represent some of the variety of Qur’ānic narrative, stories that are repeated and one that is not: Sūrat Yūsuf, SūratĀl ‘Imrān, SūratMaryam, SūratṬaha and Sūratal-Qaṣaṣ. It looks at how Qur’ānic stories function as narrative: how characters and dialogues are portrayed, what themes are repeated, what verbal echoes and conceptual links are present, what structure is established, and what belie ... More

This book approaches the Qur’ān as a literary, religious and oral text that affects its audience, drawing on narratology, rhetoric and Qur’ānic studies to develop a new methodology to analyze stories that represent some of the variety of Qur’ānic narrative, stories that are repeated and one that is not: Sūrat Yūsuf, SūratĀl ‘Imrān, SūratMaryam, SūratṬaha and Sūratal-Qaṣaṣ. It looks at how Qur’ānic stories function as narrative: how characters and dialogues are portrayed, what themes are repeated, what verbal echoes and conceptual links are present, what structure is established, and what beliefs these narrative choices strengthen. The book argues that in the Qur’ān, some narrative features that are otherwise puzzling can be seen as instances in which God, as the narrator, centers himself while putting the audience in its place, making the act of reading an interaction between God and the readers. This book examines the themes of: knowledge, control, and consonance, while examining the interaction of the text, the audience, characters and the narrator. This book utilizes and analyzes Qur’ānic commentary: classical and modern, Sunnī, Sufi and Shī‘ī, and demonstrates that a narratological and rhetorical approach to the canonized text can contribute new insights to our understanding of the Qur’ān and its worldview.