Rhetorical redundancy as a literary merit and its functions in chapter Joseph

Redundancy of words and concepts is of wide applications in literary texts. It can be found in most parts of the Qur’an, but chapter Joseph strongly benefits from that. Joseph’s story is told exclusively in this chapter, i.e., without being repeated elsewhere in the Qur’an, but the content of the chapter has an internal redundancy. Once carefully considered, various parts of the chapter appear to be of a certain type of parity and parallelism. The present study is conducted through a descriptive-analytical method so as to identify and analyze the significant patterns of redundancy in this chapter. As it is found, there are such patterns about four concepts including ‘dream, trick and shirt’, ‘seemingly contrasting places’, ‘opposite verbs’ and ‘happy ending for all of the story characters’. These patterns reveal the hidden meanings of the text by creating an effective matrix and help to imagine certain concepts that convey feelings and sentiments.