How the Qur'an Works : Reading Sacred Narrative

How the Qur''an Works: Reading Sacred Narrative focuses on Qur''anic narrative, and specifically, repetition in Qur''anic stories. This book begins its analysis looking at repetition on a large scale-structure-and moves to a small scale-root letters. The book takes a journey through the Qur''an, often expansive, moving from one verse to another, one story to another, focusing on narratological elements while conducting a fine reading of Qur''anic material in order to understand how these techniques enhance a theological agenda. It helps us to better understand particular Qur''anic stories, Qur''anic literary style and Qur''anic theology.

The Qur''an is a text of extraordinary depth and complexity. In How the Qur''an Works, Leyla Ozgur Alhassen takes the reader on a journey through the Qur''an, moving from one verse to another, one story to another, focusing on narratological elements while conducting a close reading in order to understand particular Qur''anic stories and to show how the text''s literary techniques enhance its theological agenda. She unpacks the text by focusing on Qur''anic narrative, and specifically, repetition in Qur''anic stories. Repetition is an important part of the Qur''an''s literary technique. Ozgur Alhassen traces the use of repetition as a narrative device from the text''s overall structure to individual letters. She compares different Qur''anic stories and explores the kinds of repetition that occur in them and what purposes they serve. Repetition, she shows, forges patterns, connections, and layers of meaning that develop, complicate, and comment on the Qur''an''s messages.