Abstract

Developed from the first author’s doctoral research, this article examines the literary organization of Surah Yusuf through a coordinated use of Aristotle’s Poetics, modern narratology, and Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Scholarship has established the surah’s theological, rhetorical, linguistic, and narrative richness, yet these dimensions are often studied separately. The article therefore asks how structural poetics and discourse analysis can illuminate the surah without obscuring the distinctive status and purposes of Qur’anic revelation.
The study adopts qualitative close reading, comparative analysis, and selective consultation of classical and modern Arabic tafsīr. It traces causal sequence, characterization, dialogue, thematic development, reversal, recognition, authority, identity, and ethical communication. Aristotle, narratology, and CDA serve as limited analytical resources rather than standards against which the Qur’anic text is measured. Readings from al-Ṭabarī, al-Qurṭubī, Ibn Kathīr, Ibn ʿĀshūr, and Sayyid Quṭb provide linguistic, rhetorical, exegetical, and ethical guidance for the verse-level analysis.
The findings show that the surah develops a sustained narrative movement from Yusuf’s dream and his brothers’ jealousy through separation, temptation, imprisonment, public responsibility, recognition, and reconciliation. Its unified action and reversals invite comparison with Aristotelian poetics, but their narrative purposes are different. Conflict is directed toward ethical testing, disclosure, restoration, and divine providence rather than tragic catastrophe. Yusuf emerges as a prophetic protagonist whose patience, chastity, judgment, and forgiveness shape both the course of events and their resolution. Dialogue operates simultaneously at textual, narrative, socio-ideological, and revelatory levels.
The article consequently argues for a qualified comparison between Qur’anic narrative and classical poetics: formal comparison is illuminating, but theoretical equivalence is not. The proposed Qur’anic Narrative Theory brings narrative coherence, ethical purpose, prophetic characterization, and revelatory discourse into a single interpretive hierarchy. It is presented as a provisional contribution to comparative poetics and the literary study of sacred narrative, whose wider value must be tested through further textual and comparative research.

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