The Conceptualization of Love in Shams' Sonnets and Reviewing its ‎Connection with Quran: from Semantics Viewpoint

Religious language is the source of many metaphors and their penetration into literature. Literature, especially mystical literature, has been influenced by religion and Quran's conceptualization. The current paper aims to explore the conceptualization of love in the poems of Rumi and how they are inspired by Quran, using conceptual metaphor. The application of the conceptual metaphor theory could clarify the inter-textual dimensions of Rumi’s poems from a cognitive viewpoint. We aim at assessing the extent of influence of Quran on Rumi with an analytic-descriptive method. To do so, all love metaphors from thirty sonnets was derived in an attempt to find an answer to the question that which metaphors or other cognitive schemes are used in Quran and Rumi’s poems to conceptualize love. Our comparison and analysis shows that in both texts, there is a universal metaphor of the beloved for God. In Shams’ literary-poetical discourse, four metaphors of love as a key, as a journey, as a plant, and as a reign could be derived. The origins of the concepts show a deep Quran influence on Shams’ sonnets.