<![CDATA[This study aims to analyze the construction of symbolic meanings of the body and love in Nizar Qabbani’s poem I Bear Witness That There Is No Woman But You through Roland Barthes’s semiotic approach. This qualitative study, designed as library research, focuses on two main themes: (1) the construction of the signs of the body and love through denotative and connotative meanings, and (2) the formation of myths and ideological values regarding love and the body through second-order signification. Data were collected using the observe-note-document technique and analyzed through three stages: denotation, connotation, and myth. The results indicate that at the denotative level, the body and love are represented by physical parts (such as fingernails, the navel, breasts, eyes, and hair) as well as intimate/relational actions. At the level of connotation, these signs transform into symbols of maturity, protection, inner freedom, cosmic power, and dignified eroticism. At the mythical level, the text constructs women as nurturing figures, the center of men’s existence and emotional life, the catalyst for masculine identity, and revolutionary figures. Furthermore, love is constructed as a space of psychological liberation and a sacred inner experience. Thus, the female body and the speaker’s body in this poem are not merely biological aesthetic objects, but rather symbolic mediums and ideological arenas that shatter taboos and reconstruct the values of modern eroticism.]]>
