“The Needle's Eye: Margaret Drabble's Exploration of Religious Morality and its Intertextuality with the Bible and the Quran”.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31185/wjfh.Vol21.Iss4.1322Keywords:
The Needle’s Eye, Margaret Drabble, IntertextualityAbstract
Margaret Drabble’s The Needle’s Eye (1972) is a remarkable literary achievement that concentrates on religious morality, spirituality, materialism, personal relationships, and social classes. Due to the novel's title, which indirectly alludes to the metaphor of ''the camel passing through the eye of the needle'' mentioned in both the Gospel of Matthew(19:24) and Surah Al-A’raf (7:40), and its protagonist, Rose , who directly states the Gospel of Matthew(19:24), the research aims to examine Drabble’s explicit and implicit intertextuality with religious texts: the Bible and the Quran. The study presents various definitions of intertextuality highlighting its major types in literature. It also profoundly concerns the influence of Biblical and Quranic intertextuality on characterization of the main characters especially their moral and spiritual transformation throughout the progress of the novel. Furthermore, the research sheds light on the technique of omniscient narrator which enhances Drabble’s religious message of Divine guidance.
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