This study examines the use of the story of the Prophet Joseph (peace be upon him) in contemporary Palestinian poetry by investigating the mechanisms of adaptation and transformation applied by Mahmoud Darwish to the Qur’anic elements of the story in his poem “I Am Joseph, O My Father.” The research problem arises from the considerable number of studies that have examined the poem and the use of heritage in Darwish’s poetry, while relatively few have focused on classifying the forms of transformation and analyzing their mechanisms and effectiveness in generating meaning. The study is limited to this poem, as it incorporates numerous events and characters from the story of Joseph while largely retaining its general narrative framework, even as the poet reshapes some of its elements in accordance with his poetic vision.
The study adopts the descriptive-analytical approach to identify manifestations of intertextual appropriation and transformation, as well as the stylistic approach to analyze lexical and semantic variations, linguistic choices, imagery, and discourse structure. The analysis examines transformation at four principal levels: events, characters, dialogues, and Qur’anic vocabulary, in order to identify its forms and aesthetic and intellectual functions. The findings reveal that transformation takes the forms of omission, addition, expansion, and reversal of meaning, with reversal of meaning proving the most effective in generating new significance. Darwish also retains the central Qur’anic signs while recontextualizing them semantically, shifting them from their original narrative context into a contemporary poetic context that expresses experiences of exclusion and oppression. This demonstrates the capacity of the Qur’anic heritage to become an effective symbolic structure for articulating the Palestinian experience.