Mary, mother of Jesus and the Qur'anic text: A feminist literary study.
Published: 2006
Language: eng
Number of pages: 214
ISBN-13: 9780494219898
Description: This study will investigate the portrayal of Maryam, mother of `Isa (Mary mother of Jesus) and will question whether the language of the Qur'an and its meanings offer a concept of the feminine which confines or emancipates women. Maryam is chosen from among other qur'anic women of 'salvation history' because she is the exemplary figure par excellence not only to righteous women but also to the Prophet Muhammad. Not only is Maryam the only female figure named in the Qur'an, she is the only one who has the power to name as well as the only biblical and non-biblical figure to have a story of her own.Feminist literary studies raise questions pertinent to textual politics (how the story of Maryam functions), to stylistics (how linguistic and psychological truth contribute to the esthetic value of the text) and to narrative (old and new motifs and how myth relates to literature). Many scholars have contributed to gender issues and qur'a&dot;&macr;nic studies in the context of women's legal rights; however, none has devoted a literary study to a qur'anic woman figure. Other scholars, on the other hand, have devoted narrative studies to biblical figures such as Adam, Sulayman, Ibrahim, Musa and Yusuf but none has studied the portrayal of a female exemplar from a feminist perspective.This study is primarily research in the field of qur'anic scholarship on the applicability of modern literary theories to the Qur'an. Feminist literary theory attempts to break new ground for qur'anic studies and gender issues. It raises important questions for Muslim women and reclaims, through the Maryamic persona, the great meeting point between Christianity and Islam.This research will focus on the two main suras that contain the story of Maryam: The first covers her journey into the mythic where she becomes a mother archetype celebrated for her power of fertility (Surat Maryam), while the second covers her privileged infancy which equips her to enter the Holy of Holies and later to conceive her son, give him his matronym, `Isa son of Maryam, and his matrilineal genealogy, that of Al Imran. Whether through the literary or the social, through Maryam this study questions the fundamentality of the feminine in the Qur'an.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-01, Section: A, page: 0178.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto, 2006.

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