Narrative and the production of religious meaning: A narratological reading of a small death and Mawlana

Abstract

This study examines how religious meaning is produced within narrative rather than merely represented through religious discourse, symbols, or references. Focusing on Mohammed Hasan Alwan's A Small Death and Ibrahim Eissa's Mawlana, it argues that religious signification arises from the way human experience is organized within the narrative structure itself. The analysis distinguishes between religious discourse, present with varying intensity, and religious meaning, generated through narrative construction.

Building on this distinction, the study traces religious meaning through three interrelated stages: experience, plot, and time. Experience constitutes the point of departure, as characters' lived trials generate meaning gradually. Plot then composes these scattered experiences into a coherent structure, linking events so each illuminates those preceding and following it. Time subsequently reinterprets this structure through memory and recollection, allowing earlier events to acquire significations unavailable at the moment of their occurrence. Despite the divergence between Alwan's contemplative world and Eissa's media-driven one, both novels converge in this process.

The study further extends this framework into the act of reading, drawing on Martha Nussbaum, Wayne Booth, and Paul Ricœur to show how religious meaning migrates into the reader's moral consciousness.