محمدرضا ستوده نیا

Muslim exegetes have long sought to discover the wise secrets, rhetorical points, and explicit or implicit messages embedded in the expressions and structures of the Quranic text. In addition to the common methods of using lexicological approaches, Arabic morphology and syntax, ancient Arabic poetry or narrating the exegetical sayings from the prophet''s Companions to literally interpret explicit meanings of Quranic words, they sometimes appealed to intellectual methods in order to extract implicit and implied meanings hidden in some Quranic verses. In modern times, most of these technics and methods have been classified and introduced in various branches of linguistics. One of the relatively new branches of linguistics which concerns inferring implied, and intended meanings out of the utterances is pragmatics. The present study aims at conducting a comparison between the newly developed elements of pragmatics and some of the medieval Quranic commentaries which applied those elements. In this regard, three much discussed elements of presupposition, entailment and conventional implicature have been selected and then a number of old Quranic exegetes in which these three elements have been indirectly used are introduced. The study indicates that Muslim commentators of the medieval era were aware of these technics and extensively used them in their works.

The Encyclopedia of the Qur'an, published by Brill, is a product of contemporary research by Western Islamic scholars. According to its editor-in-chief, Jane McAuliffe, it aims to provide a scholarly examination of Qur'anic topics. The entry on Literary Structures, authored by Issa J. Boullata, explores the stylistic and rhetorical devices of the Qur'an and attempts to present a coherent image of the Qur'an. However, the article is open to criticism regarding its academic writing principles and content. This article therefore critically examines the entry using a descriptive-analytical approach. Despite all the positive points that the entry has made about the Qur'an, it introduces a concept called Transtextuality but then discusses other topics in its text, which diminishes the academic credibility of the author and the editor-in-chief of the encyclopedia as the responsible for the articles. This is one of the most important criticisms of this article.