THE FATHER IN CRISIS: A COMPARATIVE LITERARY ANALYSIS OF PATERNAL IDENTITY IN ENGLISH AND UZBEK LITERATURE

Abstract

This article examines the crisis of paternal identity in English/American and Uzbek literature through a comparative literary approach. The father is treated not only as a family member, but also as a cultural symbol connected with authority, memory, moral continuity and social order. The analysis draws on Shakespeare, Dickens, Hardy, Faulkner, Miller and Hemingway in the Anglophone tradition, and on Alisher Navoi, Abdulla Qodiriy, Abdurauf Fitrat, Shukur Kholmirzayev, Ulmas Umarbekov and Nazar Eshonqul in Uzbek literature. The study combines close reading with psychoanalytic, postcolonial and masculinity-oriented interpretation. It argues that the English and American literary father usually enters crisis through industrial capitalism, individualism and the collapse of personal authenticity, whereas the Uzbek literary father is destabilized by colonial pressure, Soviet ideological transformation and rapid modernization. Despite these differences, both traditions repeatedly imagine the father as a figure who cannot fully protect, provide or transmit meaning to the next generation. The comparative perspective therefore reveals a shared literary structure: paternal authority becomes most visible precisely at the moment of its weakness.