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- Title
THE MORPHOLOGY AND SIGNIFICANCE OF SOME IMĀMĪ SHĪ<sup>e</sup>ITE TRADITIONS.
- Authors
Buckley, R. P.
- Abstract
The article seeks to explore a corpus of Imāmī Hadīth featuring an encounter between the Shī'ite Imãm Ja'far al-Sādiq (d. 765 AD) and the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur (r. 754-75). It does this by employing the methods of structural analysis initially devised by Vladimir Propp in his Morphology of the Folktale (1928) and further developed by later anthropologists and folkiorists such as Alan Dundes. The article identifies the repertoire of motifs from which the traditions are composed and studies these in terms of their functional equivalence within the narratives. The wider thematic structure of the traditions is also investigated and is found to provide insights into the cultural significance of the corpus as an articulation of the Imāmī Shī'ite view of the relationship between religious and political authority.
- Subjects
MORPHOLOGY (Grammar); STRUCTURAL analysis (Linguistics); STRUCTURAL analysis in folklore; ANTHROPOLOGICAL linguistics; ANTHROPOLOGY; PROPP, Vladimir; DUNDES, Alan; TALE (Literary form)
- Publication
Journal of Semitic Studies, 2007, Vol 52, Issue 2, p301
- ISSN
0022-4480
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/jss/fgm006