A comparison and Criticism of the Concept of Imagery from the Perspective of Tabataba ee and Shanghiti

Imagery and metaphor and their uses in the interpretations are among the most important literary discussions of Quran, because the application of imagery, irony, metaphor and other merits of rhetoric in Quran are recognized as the most distinct aspects of Quran’s discourse miracles attracting others to this Book. Many of the fellows of eloquence and literature have consensus over it. But, discrepancies among interpreters regarding their use in Quran exist. Allameh Tabataba’ee, a Shi’ite interpreter, is a proponent and Shanghiti, contemporary Salafi interpreter, denies their use in his interpretation “Azva’ Al-Bayan” and specific treatise. Although they, both, agree on quintessential nature of Quran’s lexicons real use they do not accept literal imagery and metaphor to the maximum extent possible, but Tabataba’ee approves imagery in case that words in their surface structure and denotations do not contradict the logical meaning and are not inconsistent with the context of the word and proposes different theories to justify their use in Quran within their natural surrounding trying to adhere to the truth as much as possible. It seems Tabataba’ee’s theory of “semantic spirit” differs essentially from Shanghiti’s theory of “denial of imagery” though intersecting one another in upper layer. These two theories are investigated and compared in the present study because Tabataba’ee does not completely deny imagery; instead he resorts to the theory of “enacting words to capture the semantic spirits” to limit the scope of imagery in Quran and he talks about imagery and metaphor where there is found an evidence contradicting what it looks like in the surface. On the other hand, Shanghiti adopts a discourse approach to fundamentally deny their use. The two theories’ results and effects should be considered in interpretation.