Abstract:

The article analyses the conceptual metaphor ‘love is war’ in the ghazals of ‘Abd al-Hamid Mohmand, an Afghan classical poet of the late 17th-early 18th century, and showcases its versatile manifestations. In poetic tradition this metaphor is utilized to map the source domain of ‘war’ to the sensual and non-empiric target domain of ‘love’, which means that the relationship between the lyric hero and his Beloved is conceptualized in terms of war or a battle. This conceptual pattern relies on associations to produce a myriad of metaphors where military and love concepts are amazingly intertwined. In Hamid's ghazals ‘love is war’ pattern would imply that it is the lyric hero who is suffering from love. His suffering is meticulously displayed by various situation metaphors. The investigation into the conceptual metaphor ‘love is war’ and its use in Hamid Mohmand's ghazals yields the conclusion that the poet did not develop this metaphoric pattern without any purpose. Jointly, numerous poetic images create Hamid Mohmand's impressive poetic landscape that emerges through metaphorical mapping of the source domain of ‘war’ to the target domain of ‘love’.

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