『꾸란』 유수프 이야기의 서사 구조

Abstract

The paper aims to define the features of narratives in the Qur’an,especially the story of Yusuf. The Qur’an is a religious text in the firstplace, but it is widely known to have linguistic and literary merits. So is thestory of Yusuf. The story, as a narrative work, has literary values throughdistinctive language, structure, characters and narrative strategies. The paper begins with an introduction to the literary aspects of theQur’an, and the historical background of the twelfth Surah, the Surah ofYusuf. The paper looks into the story of Yusuf from three formal aspects:narrator, temporal structure, and characterization. It is clear that thenarrator showed various attitudes towards the story: simple mediationbetween the characters’ dialogue and the narrate, or narrating in thirdperson limited point of view, or in third person omniscient point of view,or in first person omniscient point of view which implies that God /narrator is speaking. It should be noted that the greater part of the story wasnot narrated by the narrator himself, but by the characters. As for thetemporal structure, the overall events of the story progressedconsecutively. In the meantime, the technique of prolepsis was used through the dreams of the characters such as Yusuf, the jailed youth, andthe king of Egypt. The characters of the story were presented mainly bydialogues. The main character, Yusuf, got the largest portion of thenarrator’s concern, but his brothers also enjoyed a fairly detailed narration. The sequence of their episodes and continuous internal conflictscontributed in constructing them as vivid, developing, complicated, andround characters.