Exploring William C Chittick’s Concept of Spirituality in Elif Shafak’s “The Forty Rules of Love”

Abstract

Ever since man is indulged in the clutches of violence and injustice, greed and materialism have been the very want of men. No one is ready to adopt spirituality in this age of materialism, it is a high award for Shafak to express on spirituality and spiritual love. This study explores Chittick’s Spirituality in her book “The Forty Rules of Love”. This research paper unveils how Shafak’s novel works not only as a novel but also as literary piece to show spirituality to the materialist society. This study adopts a qualitative research design to tress out the characteristics of spirituality and divine love in the novel of Elif Shafak “The Forty Rules of Love”. The textual analysis technique is used to analyze the texts indepth to know the context of spiritual themes in the book. The study indicates that Chittick’s spirituality has been used by Shafak in every rule of the novel. Moreover, the scholars’ exploration enters into the hearts of readers to show divine love between teacher and disciple. This research work indicates that how Shafak’s novel performs as a spiritual guide for the people of the world. In twenty-first century spirituality has declined in literary works, but some writers uplift to promote humanity. In this paper, the readers are inclined towards spirituality whereas, Rumi and Shams are key figures.