ABSTRACT
After considering the use of literary critical methods of reading as exegetical tools for the book of Ecclesiastes, this chapter highlights that it is established that Ecclesiastes can be examined as a narrative work, in which a narrator relates a first person account within the framing borders of editorial. The root of this concept is the manner in which stories are narrated. The type of social commentary novels offer is diverse and varied, according to the way in which the telling of the story impinges upon the human interests of readers, potential and actual. For Booth, a high point here is the ability of a given narrator to combine intellectual and aesthetic interests with those of the imagination. Whereas Booth's study tends towards the development of the concept of social commentary as a broad term to describe the role of narrative fiction, Jameson pursues a Marxist, materialist theory which posits an intimate connection between language and social activity.
