Man or Muse: Affinities in the Inspirational Roles of Rumi’s Shams and Blake’s Milton

Abstract

The paper examines the characters of Jalal-ud-din Rumi’s Shams and William Blake’s Milton with reference to their contribution in the spiritual and poetic development of Rumi and Blake and to find out similarities in their inspirational roles. Zepetnek’s approach of inclusion has been followed to make functional comparison of both characters. The paper is focused on discovering affinities in two sections. At first, both characters are judged as spiritual inspiration and secondly, their inspirational function in poetic development of Rumi and Blake. It has been concluded that in spite of belonging to different languages, religious communities, and different historical periods both figures have performed almost identical role in the life of Jalal-ud-din Rumi and William Blake.