The Qur'ān's employment of diverse modes of discourse is, perhaps, the text's defining literary feature. These discourses, ranging from apocalyptic, to narrative, to legal, have long been observed by Western scholars. Genre studies of the Qur'ān, however, have largely stagnated, and little progress has been made beyond cursory classifications. This stagnation is particularly stunting to the study of the textual history of the Qur'ān, as vital questions concerning the development of individual genres and the relationship between Qur'anic genre and the unit of the sura remain unanswered. Synthesizing existing conceptions of Qur’anic genre with genre theory, the present study establishes a literary framework for approaching Qur’anic genre based on the concept of Qur’anic utterances: thematically and syntactically demarcated literary units by which genres are communicated. The study recognizes three distinct categories of Qur’anic genre (embedded, communicative, and composite) and focuses on the Qur’ān’s communicative genres that occur at the level of the verse, sura passage, and sura. Chapter one opens with a survey of engagement with Qur’anic genre in the modern and classical traditions and establishes a novel methodological framework for approaching Qur’anic genre rooted in speech genre theory. Chapters two through five outline, catalogue, and analyze the six communicative genres of Qur’anic discourse: religio-political commentary, exhortation, narrative, edict, prayer, and creed. Additionally, each genre is compared to counterparts in the late antique literary tradition. Chapter six discusses the communicative genres of prayer and creed and concludes the study by looking forward to the ways in which the Qur’ān combines these communicative genres to create longer and more complex composite genres. A fuller understanding of the Qur’ān’s genres of discourse, as offered in this study, serves to engender a greater appreciation and understanding of the Qur’ān as literature, refine the chronology of its revelation and textual history, and improve its use as an historical source for the earliest Muslim community.