Mirza Ghalib’s Metaphors of Mortality : A Cognitive-Linguistic Study

Explores Mirza Ghalib’s Urdu poetry through a linguistic lens, specifically focusing on his metaphors of mortality.

This book delves into the intricate linguistic artistry of Mirza Ghalib’s Urdu poetry, focusing on his evocative metaphors that illuminate the theme of mortality. It bridges literary analysis with linguistic theory to uncover how Ghalib’s poetic language maps existential themes onto concrete imagery. The author adopts a rigorous linguistic framework grounded in Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) which posits that metaphors are not merely stylistic devices but cognitive tools that structure human thought. This approach involves a systematic analysis of Ghalib’s metaphors of mortality, examining how they map abstract domains, e.g. death and transience onto source domains, e.g. fire, light and decay. The study employs close textual analysis of selected ghazals and couplets, focusing on lexical choices, syntactic structures, phonological patterns, and semantic ambiguities inherent in Urdu’s linguistic richness. It integrates tools from semantics, pragmatics, and stylistics to dissect how Ghalib’s metaphors create layered meanings that shift with context. The book also draws on intertextual analysis, connecting Ghalib’s imagery to classical Perso-Arabic poetic traditions and the socio-historical milieu of nineteenth-century India. By combining qualitative analysis with linguistic theory, the book offers a multidimensional exploration of Ghalib’s craft, balancing literary appreciation with empirical rigor. It offers a nuanced understanding of Ghalib’s poetic legacy, emphasising the power of language to articulate the ineffable and affirming his place as a timeless voice in world literature.