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The Poetics of Qur՚ānic Punning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

A. Rippin
A. Rippin
Affiliation:
University of Calgary
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Extract

Puns stand as a bridge between rhyme and metaphor. Sound—that characteristic of rhyme—combines with the explosion of semantic implications associated with metaphor into the form of word play or punning. The quality of blending of sound together with meaning remains the best definition of what constitutes a pun. Certainly it is possible to create a classification system for puns which will lead to a workable description of the phenomenon. Interesting attempts along this line have been made working with Arabic, Biblical Hebrew, and English material, for example. Such efforts tend to rely on the formal aspects of the words used in the puns in order to produce their classificatory systems. That is, they speak of puns using the ‘literal’ meaning of two words, puns relying on ‘metaphoric’ meanings, and so forth; or they speak of the formal relationship between the words in question in terms of the combinations and permutations of letters and sounds. The aim of this paper, however, is not to circumscribe the use of puns in the Qur՚ān, although certainly a number of formal ranges of punning employment will emerge in the course of the treatment. Rather, the goal is to see what puns convey to the reader of the Qur՚ān, to see how the sound of music combines with sound argument within the text of scripture. Leaving the definition of word play or pun open (indeed, even using those two words interchangeably) allows the broadest view of the phenomenon to be embraced.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , February 1994 , pp. 193 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1994

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References

1 Ricoeur, Paul, ‘Word, polysemy, metaphor: creativity in language,’ reprinted in Mario J. Valdés, A Ricoeur reader: reflection and imagination (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 65–85 (originally published in Philosophy Today, 17, 1973, 97–128);Google Scholar this article provides an excellent introduction to many issues related to the topics discussed here.

2 See, for a summary, EI (1st ed., Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1913–36), s.v. ‘tadjnīs’, VII, 599–60; see further below.

3 Watson, Wilfred G. E., Classical Hebrew poetry: a guide to its techniques (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1984), 238Google Scholar; see also Fisch, Harold, Poetry with a purpose: biblical poetics and interpretation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 6–7 and passimGoogle Scholar, for examples of the treatment of puns and the way they act to draw attention to language within the biblical text.

4 For example, see the frequently cited article, Brown, James, ‘Eight types of puns’, PMLA, 71, 1956, 14–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 For example, as in ibid.

6 As is frequently the case in the Arabic treatments of the subject. See below.

7 Steven, UllmannSemantics: an introduction to the science of meaning (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962)Google Scholar, 188, sees the division between explicit and implicit puns as the basic element in their classification, arguing that polysemous, implicit puns are ‘more interesting’.

8 Attridge, Derek, ‘Unpacking the portmanteau, or Who's afraid of Finnegans Wake’, in Culler, Jonathan (ed.), On puns: the foundation of letters (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), 145Google Scholar.

9 Culler, Jonathan, ‘The call of the phoneme: Introduction’, in Culler, J. (ed), On puns, 4–5Google Scholar.

10 In encapsulating its review of the anti-feminist work by Camille Paglia, Sex, art and American culture, the Toronto Globe and Mail (October 24, 1992) said, ‘The iconoclastic cultural critic leads some scared cows to the slaughter. ‘Unfortunately, subsequent repetitions of this statement in the newspaper altered (altared?) the word.

11 Cited in M. Ullmann, Semantics, 189.

12 Ahl, Frederick, ‘Ars Est Caelare Artem (Art in puns and anagrams engraved)’, in Culler, J. (ed.), On puns, 25Google Scholar.

13 F. Ahl, ibid., 17–43, and more fully in his Metaformations: soundplay and wordplay in Ovid and other classical poets (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985)

14 F. Ahl, Metaformations, 22. Word play appears to be a fundamental element in much world literature, not only Greek and Latin; see, for example, Martin Schwartz, ‘Scatology and eschatology in Zoroaster: on the paronomasia of Yasna 48:10 and on Indo-European h2eg “to make taboo” and on the reciprocity verbs *kwsen(w) and *megh’, in J. Asmussen, H. Bailey et al. (ed.), Papers in honour of Mary Boyce (Acta Iranica 25, Hommages et Opera Minora, vol.XI, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1985), 473–96 and ‘Coded sound patterns, acrostics, and anagrams in Zoroaster's oral poetry’, in R. Schmitt, P. O. Skjærvo (ed.), Studia Grammatica Iranica: Festschrift für Helmut Humbach (Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft, Beiheft 13, neue Folge, Munich: R. Kitzinger, 1986), 327–92 (my thanks to Professor Schwartz for alerting me to his work) and Charles D. Orzech, ‘Puns on the humane king: analogy and application in an East Asian apocryphon’, JAOS, 109, 1989, 17–24. M. Ullmann, Semantics, 192, presents a conservative view which provides a contrast to all of this. For him, puns are ‘largely a matter of fashion’. As for those who look for ‘word-play as a major poetic device’ in writers such as Shakespeare, they are forgetting ‘that punning is in many cases a low form of wit’. However, ‘if used with discretion, [punning] can provide a valuable vehicle for humour and irony, emphasis and contrast, allusion and innuendo, and a variety of other stylistic effects.’

15 Fried, Debra, ‘Rhyme puns’, in Culler, J. (ed.), On puns, 99.Google Scholar

16 J. Culler, ‘The call of the phoneme: introduction’, in J. Culler (ed.), On puns, 13, cites Frederick Ahl as suggesting that some of this is a result of the difference between inflected and uninflected languages. Speakers of English (and similar languages) tend to assume a direct correspondence between ‘word’ and ‘referent’, but those whose language constructs words through inflection are ‘more aware of the constantly shifting shape of a word as it changes person or case.’ One might suspect this to be even more the case with languages which build from roots such as Arabic and Hebrew. This would depend, however, on the speaker/writer's consciousness of the structure of the language as Barr, James, The semantics of biblical language (Oxford: Blackwell, 1961Google Scholar) has pointed out and argued against. For the debate on this aspect, also see Sawyer, John F. A., ‘Root-meanings in Hebrew’, Journal of Semitic Studies, 12, 1967, 37–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 See the outline provided in the article ‘tadjnīs’ in EI (1st ed.), VII, 599–600 and the very lucid discussion in Young, Terri De, ‘Language in a looking-glass: Samīḥ al-Qāsim and the modernization of jinās’, JAOS, 112, 1992, 183–97, esp. 183–6Google Scholar.

18 I have made no attempt at a full survey of Arabic sources in what follows, nor have I included every possible example. Rather, I have looked at three works primarily and selected examples which demonstrate my point: al-‘Askarī (d. c. A.H. 400), Kitāb al-ṣanā’atayn (Cairo: Ḥalabī, 1971), from the classical period; al-Suyūṭī (d. 911 A.H.), al-Itqān fī ‘ulūm al-Qur ‘ān, nave’ 58, section: al-jinās (Cairo: Dār al-turāth, 1974–5) from the late medieval period; and ‘Abd al- Fattāḥ Lāshīn, al-Baaī fī (ḍaw’ asālīb al-Qur՚ān (Cairo: Dār al-Ma'ārif, 1979) from the contemporary period. For the most part, these works repeat each other in terms of examples. I have supplemented this information with occasional reference to some other classical treatises, a few works of modern scholarship, and my own reading of the Qur՚ān.

19 Kugel, James, ‘On the Bible and literary criticism,’ Prooftexts, 1, 1981, 222.Google Scholar

20 Cited EI (1st ed.), s.v. ‘tadjnīs’, 7/599; al-Suyūṭī, 3/271; Lāshīn, 160. al-Suyūṭī notes that some people object to calling this jinās because the pun works on the basis of conjoining the word sā'a literally (ḥaqīqa) and metaphorically (majāz) rather than with two different meanings. Such objections depend upon a specific understanding of the way in which words have meanings, a discussion of which would add nothing to the present topic. Arthur Jeffery, The foreign vocabulary of the Koran (Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1938), 157–8, points out that the use of ‘hour’ in the eschatological sense is expressed in Syriac with this word. The point I wish to make here is not that the use of ‘hour’ in these two senses is borrowed from Near Eastern imagery (that is quite clear and needs no elaboration): the Qur՚ānic punning usage and what it conveys is what is at stake here.

21 Translations of the Qur՚ān are taken from Arberry, A.J., The Koran interpreted (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1955)Google Scholar, modified as necessary; verse numbering, however, follows the Cairo text.

22 Cited EI (lst ed.), s.v. ‘tadjnīs’, vn, 599; al-'Askarī, 331; al-Suyūṭī, III, 272; Lāshīn, 161.

23 Cited in al-';Askarī, 331; also al-Rummānī (d. 386 A.H.), al-Nukat ft i'jāz al-Qur՚ān, in Allāh, M. Khalaf and m, M. Zaghlūl Sallā (ed.), Thalāth rasa'ilfī i'jāz al-Qur՚ān (Cairo: Dār al-Ma‘ārif, 1956), 100Google Scholar.

24 Cited in al-'Askarī, 340; al-Suyūṭī, III, 272; Lāshīn, 162.

25 Cited in al-Suyūṭī, m, 272; Lāshīn, 161.

26 Cited in EI (lst ed.), s.v. ‘tadjnīs’, VII, 600; al-Suyūṭī, III, 272.

27 Cited in al-'Askarī, 340; al-Suyūṭī, III, 272; also see Bell, Richard, A Commentary on the Qur՚ān (Manchester: Journal of Semitic Studies, 1991), ad locGoogle Scholar.

28 Cited in al-Rummānī, 99.

29 Cited in ibid., 99.

30 Cited in ibid., 99.

31 Cited in ibid., 100.

32 Cited in El (1st ed.), s.v. ‘tadjnīs’, VII, 600; al-'Askarī, 331; al-Suyūṭī, m, 273.

33 Cited in Lāshīn, 163.

34 Cited in al-'Askarī, 340.

35 Cited in al-Suyūṭī, Hi, 273; Lāshīn 163.

36 Cited in al-'Askarī, 331, who glosses rayḥān as ‘sustenance’, rizq; al-Suyūṭī, m, 273.

37 This is the same problem as determining whether a word is used metaphorically or not: in the changing nature of a language, metaphors become lexicalized and then exist as polysemous meanings (‘metaphors we live by’).

38 Cited in al-'Askarī, 331; al-Suyūṭī, m, 273.

39 Cited in El (1st ed.), s.v. ‘tadjnīs’, vn, 600; al-Suyūṭī, m, 273.

40 Ahl, F., ‘Ars Est Caelare Artum’, in Culler, J. (ed.), On puns, 21Google Scholar.

41 J. Culler, ‘The call of the phoneme: Introduction’, in J. Culler (ed.) On puns, 10, speaking of Derrida: ‘From this vantage, literature can be seen not as an author's appropriation of the world but as a dissemination or dispersal of the proper name, the transformation of it into the elements of the world-in short, a foundation of letters.’

42 Cited in al-'Askarī, 331.

43 Guillaume, Alfred, ‘Paronomasia in the Old Testament’, Journal of Semitic Studies, 9, 1964, 285CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 See Wansbrough, John, Quranic studies: sources and methods of scriptural interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 1Google Scholar.

45 The word occurs as a diptote in Q. 10:87 and 43:51 in reference to Moses and Q. 12:21 and 12:99 in reference to Joseph.

46 Cited in Mir, Mustansir, ‘TheQur’ ā nasliterature’, Religion and literature, 20, 1988, 58Google Scholar; also see Jeffery, A., Foreign vocabulary, 26Google Scholar. Because this verse is not an ‘explicit’ pun (see above at n. 7), it does not figure in Arab treatments of jinās. It did, however, create a great deal of problem for the exegetes a n d grammarians; for example, see Sībawayhi, , al-Kitāb (Cairo: Būlāq, 1316–17) II, 23Google Scholar, line 8f.; ‘Ubayda, Abū, Majāz al-Qur’ān (Cairo: al-Khānijī, 1954) i, 42Google Scholar; al-Farrā’, , Ma'ānī al-Qur՚ān (Cairo: Dār al-kutub, 1955), i, 42–3Google Scholar; al-Naḥḥās, , I'rāb al-Qur՚ān (Beirut: ՙAlam al-kutub, 1985, 2nd printing) i, 232Google Scholar; al-Qaysī, Makkī, Mushkil I'rāb al-Qur՚dn (Beirut: Mu՚assasat al-risāla, 1984, 2nd printing), i, 96Google Scholar.

47 Cited in al-ՙAskarī, 332.

48 See above after n. 23.

49 Cited in R. Bell, Commentary, ad loc.

50 Cited in Robinson, Neal, Christ in Islam and Christianity: the representation of Jesus in the Qur՚ān and the classical Muslim commentaries (Basingstoke: Macraillan, 1991), 37–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 See, for example, al-Tabarī, , Jāmi’ al-bayān ‘an ta'wīl āy al-Qur՚ān (Cairo: Dār al-ma'ārif, 1955), ii, 143–5, ad Q. 2:62Google Scholar.

52 The idea that punning lies at the basis of allegory, such that allegory is a narratidevelopment from a core pun, is an idea that may find application in the Qur՚ān. See Quilligan, Maureen, The language of allegory: defining the genre (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979), 33Google Scholar.

53 Cited in al-Suyūṭī, m, 273; Lāshīn, 163.

54 N. Calder has pointed out to me that puns between ra'ã and warã are common in spoken Arabic, reflecting the fact that, in certain instances, there is an easily perceivable punning connexion between the forms of the two words. This suggests that a reader may bring to the text of the Qur՚ān a previous knowledge of the punning potential between these two words and would be able to perceive it in this passage quite easily, despite the dissimilarity of the form of the words in this particular case.

55 For some of these considerations, see Fried, D., ‘Rhyme puns’, in J. Culler (ed.), On puns, 90Google Scholar.

56 Cited in al-Suyūṭī, m, 272; Lāshīn, 162.

57 Cited in al-‘Askarī, 340.

58 Cited in al-Suyūṭī, III, 271.

59 Cited in ibid., m, 273.

60 Cited in ibid., m, 271–2; Lāshīn, 161.

61 Cited in al-Suyūṭī, m, 271; Lāshīn, 161. N. Calder has suggested to me that this example should be treated an an ‘orthographic’ pun, given the relationship between the written forms and sīn, and shīn and fā’ and qāf. There remains, to my perception, a sufficient relationship between words in terms of their ‘music’ to allow this example to qualify within the parameters of this study.

62 Portions of this paper were first presented at the American Academy of Religion annual meeting, San Francisco, November, 1992. For the context of puns in the overall poetics of the Qur՚ān, see my forthcoming work, sponsored by the Late Antiquity and Early Islam project, The Qur’ān: content, text and interpretation, vol. i, Rhetoric, symbolism and poetics of the Qur’ān, to be published by Darwin Press.