An Analysis of Elif Shafak’s The Forty Rules of Love in the Context of Cosmopolitanism

Cosmopolitanism is increasingly being used by fiction writers in contemporary literature as it narrates the political, social, and cultural concerns of the present-day. Authors adapt to the needs of contemporary audiences in a cosmopolitan context by writing beyond their region and boundaries. Literature plays an important role in forming people's cultural and ethical consciousness as it offers a space where actual and imagined boundaries are continually transgressed. Likewise, cosmopolitanism provides a framework to communicate with "the other" that transcends xenophobia and parochialism, treating foreignness, globalization, and diversity with a positive mindset. In Elif Shafak's 2010 novel, The Forty Rules of Love, a tolerant approach to "the other" is portrayed by integrating the fictitious biography of Rumi, the Persian-Turkish with the story of a Jewish-American housewife in her repetitive and boring life seeking spiritual rebirth. Through her plot and setting, she builds a cosmopolitan society that aims to build an allegiance to the community of human beings in the entire world and aspires for a moral community where all human beings irrespective of class, nationality, gender, race or religion are treated with equality, respect and justice. This paper analyses the cosmopolitan characters and instances in the novel that reject the fixed notions of belonging and endorse a pluralistic culture that promotes the identification of oneself with the strangeness of the world. It also aims to present the attention of the readers to the relevance of mystical teachings of Sufism across the physical, geographical or ethnic boundaries.