Study of Duration in the Story of Mary in the Holy Qur’an based on Gerard Cenette’s theory

Time is one of the important and pivotal elements in the narrative structure of the novel, and within its framework all narrative works take place. Gerard Genette, the greatest narrative theorist of time, has produced the most extensive research on this topic. He studied the course of the story from chronology to narrative time in three components: "order, duration, and frequency." This research aims to study the duration in the Holy Quran, taking the story of Mary as an application model. Through permanence, we can adjust the rhythm of the narrative by speeding up the narrative and disrupting the narrative. Increasing the speed of narration includes the technique of summary and ellipsis, and decreasing the speed of narration includes the technique of pause and scene. The research is based on the descriptive-analytical approach to monitor the movement of narrative time in the story of Mary, in order to determine the use of the techniques of ellipsis, summary, pause  and scene in it, and to analyze these techniques in order to reach accurate results. The research reached results, the most important of which is that the technique of the recit scenique occupied a large space in the story of Mary, helped to slow down the pace of time, and played a prominent role in revealing the psychological dimensions of Mary. The technique of summary and ellipsis played a prominent role in accelerating the pace of narration by skipping long periods of time that were not necessary or pivotal. These two techniques led to succinctness of words with depth of significance and thus achieving the eloquence of narrative brevity in the story. The pause technique is very little present in this story.

Key words: Narrative, Time, Duration, Holy Quran, Mary.

 

Introduction

The Qur’anic story occupies a large space in the Holy Qur’an’s surahs, and it is the most effective means of influencing souls. What draws attention in the Qur’anic story is its use of the elements and components of narrative construction in a way that suits the context of the story and achieves its goals and objectives. Story structure has many elements, including: characters, events, time, place, and dialogue. Temporal techniques are among the most important and prominent of these elements, because of the functions they perform in the form of expression and achieving the purposes of the story. Given the position of the temporal structure in building the story, the subject of our research is the technique of permanence in the Qur’anic story. 

Materials & methods

In this research, we attempt to address the techniques of permanence that are linked to measuring the speed of time in narrative text, and are represented in two basic aspects of temporal movement: speeding up the narrative, which is represented by “summary and deletion,” and slowing it down, consisting of “the dialogic scene and the descriptive pause.” After the theoretical part, we will address the applied part of the study, where we will work to devise and analyze the techniques of permanence in the story of Mary in the Holy Qur’an. The goal is to uncover how the Holy Qur’an uses permanence techniques in the story of Mary and the extent of their employment and influence in narrative construction. As for the method, we relied on the descriptive and analytical method.

 

Discussion &Result

The presence of time in narration is of great importance. It is one of the most prominent elements upon which narration is based in the Holy Qur’an, and it has great weight and effective rhythm in Quranic discourses. The Qur’anic discourse employed the techniques of slowing down and accelerating in a unique manner, the technical aspects of which appear precisely in a manner consistent with the objectives of the surah.

 

Conclusion

This research reached a number of results, the most important of which are:

The scene is the most permanent technique present in the story of Mary, and the dialogue scenes constitute a basic structure in building this story so that we can consider them the main technique in it. Then deletion and summary were most present in it. The most frequently used movement in this story to speed up the narration is deletion. The pause technique is very rare in this story, and the wise narrator did not use it except in one case.

The technique of deletion and the technique of summary in the story of Mary came as required by the narrative structure, and according to the goals of the wise narrator, and they played a prominent role in accelerating the speed of narrative time by skipping long periods of time that were not necessary or pivotal. These two techniques led to brevity of words with depth of meaning, thus achieving the eloquence of narrative brevity. The wise narrator artistically deleted some parts of the story so that the reader could follow the story passionately without getting tired.

The scene in the story of Mary was greatly used. The dialogue scenes occupied a prominent place in this story, and they were proportional and consistent with the size of the narrative material and did not contribute to disturbance or disintegration of the narrative structure. The speed of narration in dialogue scenes is the same as the speed of events. The dialogue used narratively in this story contributed to building and developing the event, and played a prominent role in revealing the psychological dimensions of Mary, as it is one of the basic means by which the characters are drawn.