Defining the Undefinable: A Comparative Study of the Concept of Love in Shakespeare and Mahwi’s Selected Poetry

Love is experienced as a powerful and pervasive emotion that can affect many aspects of human life through influencing people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions. The literature that revolves around this complex human emotion is extensive. Some praise it highly while others blame their melancholy and miseries on it. However, when it comes to defining the term, there are many arguments each approaching it from a different angle. This paper presents several scholarly definitions of love before looking at how William Shakespeare and Mahwi define it through their sonnets and ghazals respectively. Several examples from Shakespeare and Mahwi’s poetry have been selected for study and comparison. The paper finds that both poets attribute positive and negative characteristics to love believing that it has the power to create in people feelings of completeness as well as destitute and isolation. To both poets, love has transformative powers shaping people’s social, personal and spiritual connections. However, in Mahwi’s ghazals, most of the connections formed in love have a spiritual dimension to them and God is presented in the center of them as the beloved, while the relationships found in Shakespeare’s sonnets rarely incorporate this otherworldly aspect and instead revolve around love developed among two human beings.