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Lujain Bitar, Independent Researcher, United Arab EmiratesAbstract
This paper examines the concept of love within Mediterranean culture, a notion deeply associated with the philosophical idea of descent—a movement that entails falling and the potential loss or transformation of individual identity. Some thinkers interpret this descent as a state of vulnerability in which love robs the self of its autonomy, while others perceive love as a path to knowledge—an ascent of consciousness that cannot be achieved without first experiencing descent. Through a close reading of Mediterranean poetry and philosophical writings, ranging from Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry to the works of Veronica Franco and culminating in the poetry of C. P. Cavafy, the study explores the shared linguistic metaphors of falling and rising that articulate the tension between vulnerability and transcendence. Drawing on Lucien Goldmann’s genetic structuralism, it argues that this dual movement reveals the cognitive structures underlying Mediterranean thought, whether pragmatic and rooted in social experience or mystical and grounded in transcendence. Within this framework, the paper contends that love functions as a linguistic medium for cognitive transformation, offering a renewed understanding of identity within the evolving Mediterranean consciousness. It contributes to Mediterranean literary philosophy by reframing love not merely as an emotional phenomenon but as a cyclical epistemological process in which descent becomes the necessary condition for ascent and the transformation of identity.
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Conference: PCAH2026Stream: Literature/Literary Studies
This paper is part of the PCAH2026 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Bitar L. (2026) The Linguistic Motion of Love: Cognitive Transformation in Mediterranean Poetics ISSN: 2758-0970 The Paris Conference on Arts & Humanities 2026: Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 1-7) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2758-0970.2026.1
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2758-0970.2026.1
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