Forbidden Love of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Fuzûlî’s Layla and Majnun

Abstract

The aim of this comparative literature study is to discuss two major examples of stories based on the theme of forbidden love. The focus of this study is the love stories of Romeo and Juliet, and Layla and Majnun. While Romeo and Juliet is one of the greatest examples of this theme in Western Literature, the story of Layla and Majnun is one of the most significant expressions of this theme in Old Turkish Literature. Despite the fact that these literary works were created at different times and different places, they both address the same themes that we see throughout the literary traditions of world cultures. This study attempts to explore the reason for these similarities and to locate the origin of these ideas at the essence of human nature and culture. The archetypal essence of the forbidden love theme suggests that it is an ongoing aspect of human consciousness on which many writers have drawn throughout the ages. The role of the writer is to bring these ideas to the awareness of the reader to teach a moral lesson and to elevate the reader through the connection with universal ideas which define the nature of human experience and which are, the archetypes of the collective unconscious.