American Journal Of Social Sciences And Humanity Research
93
https://theusajournals.com/index.php/ajsshr
VOLUME
Vol.05 Issue07 2025
PAGE NO.
93-96
10.37547/ajsshr/Volume05Issue07-16
24
The Genesis and Development of Artistic Psychologism
In Uzbek Storytelling
Laylo Hayitova
Alisher Navoi Tashkent State University of Uzbek Language and Literature, Uzbekistan
Received:
25 May 2025;
Accepted:
21 June 2025;
Published:
23 July 2025
Abstract:
This article discusses the genesis and development of artistic psychologism in our storytelling, how
psychologism is manifested in modern stories. Special attention is paid to the uniqueness of famous storytellers
in creating an image of the hero's psyche. It also discusses the possibilities of psychological imagery inherent in
the story genre.
Keywords:
Story, image, psychological and spiritual imagery, realism, social life, era, modernism.
Introduction:
Among the genres belonging to the epic
type, the story, especially the psychological story, is
considered the genre most used by the creators of
today's literary process. Since the story reflects a small
fragment of life, and since one or more life events are
recorded in it episodically, it requires great skill and
talent from the writer to consistently and in detail
illuminate the spiritual world of the hero, to deeply and
fully reveal the “dialectic of the soul”. In large or
medium-sized prose works such as novels and short
stories, the writer has ample opportunity to look into
the character, psyche, and soul of the hero and
penetrate into the depths of his soul.
The first examples of stories in Uzbek literature that
meet the requirements of the genre, approach a
person as a person, and consider highlighting his
psychology as a primary issue, were written by young
writers. Literary critic Dilmurod Kuronov, in his book
“Analysis of the Spiritual World”, dedicated to the
analysis of the novel “Night and Day”, calls the first
novel-
dilogy in our literature a “social
-political
psychologica
l novel”. It seems that no matter how
exaggerated the sociality in Cholpon's works is, they are
not far from depicting the turmoil of the human
spiritual world. This feature is also characteristic of the
writer's stories. A number of Cholpon's stories, such as
"On Moonlit Nights", "Lola in the Snow" and "The
Baker's Girl", were the first signs of realistic storytelling
emerging in our literature. Abdulla Qodiriy, in his
stories such as "Uloqda" and "Jinlar bazmi", sought to
enter the spiritual world of the main character and
created images in accordance with human nature and
psyche, which became one of the many literary
innovations of this era. After Qodiriy and Cholpon, such
masters of storytelling as A. Qahhor, Oybek, G. Ghulom
entered our literature, and their stories took their place
in the history of our literary treasure as beautiful
examples of realism. Although the stories written by
these writers are characterized by the foregrounding of
sociality, they should be recognized as original works
due to their unique characters, new methods of
expression, and the author's skill. Such stories include,
first of all, Oybek's "Father the Lamplighter", "Sister
Gulnor", Abdulla Qahhor's "Bemor", "Dahshat", and
Gafur Ghulam's "Bobo Kayfiy". It should be especially
noted that in this period, according to the method of
socialist realism, creators were supposed to illuminate
the life of the working people, divide the characters
into positive and negative characters, and draw the
positive hero only in white, and the negative heroes in
completely black. This situation is also observed in
stories such as "Thief", "Pomegranate", "Patient", "My
Only Thief's Child", which are examples of high word art
and skill, captivating the reader with the charm of
artistic language. Their main difference from today's
modern stories is that socialist realism deprived writers
of the opportunity to delve deeper into the human
psyche, to observe psychology more broadly, and to
look at the essence of the human being from different
angles. Naturally, this demand did not fully justify itself,
and therefore its life was short. After all, as Otkir
American Journal Of Social Sciences And Humanity Research
94
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American Journal Of Social Sciences And Humanity Research (ISSN: 2771-2141)
Hoshimov put it, "A human being is not an electric wire,
can this be divided into positive and negative?!" These
stories have been studied as mature examples of the
narrative genre in our literature. For example, in the
book “Secrets of Mastery”, co
-authored by Umarali
Normatov and Matyokub Qoshjonov, various aspects
of A. Qahhor’s stories are studied, in particular, from
the point of view of psychological analysis, and in the
writer’s story “The Thief”, the problem of the hero’s
psyche is analyzed in detail. It should be noted that the
above book was one of the first studies on A.
Qahhor’s work. It is obvious to everyone that later A.
Qahhor and his stories became the object of many
studies and a whole direction of Qahhor studies
appeared in our literary studies. This can also be seen
in the study of the creative work of the above-
mentioned writers Oybek, G. Gulom and other writers.
Since the 1980s, Uzbek storytelling has been
characterized by intellectual images, complex
characters, saturated with the author's philosophical
observations and worldview. The process of
psychological deepening and intellectualization,
characteristic of the stories of this generation, which
began with Odil Yakubov, Asqad Mukhtor, Said Ahmad,
Shukur Kholmirzayev, and Otkir Hoshimov, was
worthily continued and further developed in the stories
of writers such as Erkin A'zam and Ahmad A'zam. In the
stories written by these writers, various mental states
of a person are skillfully depicted: love and hate,
optimistic and pessimistic moods, awakened heroes
who cannot fully understand themselves and begin to
examine their inner experiences, seeking answers to
the riddles of the soul, the clash of various feelings and
experiences, the relationship between a person and
society and between individuals, as well as the
relationship of a person with his own "I". Also, in
modern Uzbek stories, references to religious themes
have increased, the scope of artistic interpretation of
Islamic religious ideas and thoughts related to faith has
increased. This, of course, was a reflection of the
freedom of belief granted by independence in
literature. For example, in some stories, in addition to
the incorporation of religious views into the essence of
the work, there are also cases where surahs of the Holy
Quran are placed as epigraphs within the story or at the
beginning of the story (S. Ahmad's story "Qarako'z
Majnun").
When we observe the possibilities of spiritual imagery
inherent in our storytelling today, we can see that,
unlike previous decades, the skill of artistic research of
a person and the social environment in which he lives
through the diversity of emotions and the intense
dynamics of experiences has grown. Now, the principle
of describing, analyzing and interpreting a person and
life from a spiritual and philosophical perspective,
characteristic of our modern storytelling, is
fundamentally different from the principle of
sociological interpretation that dominated literary and
artistic creativity in the 60s and 70s of the last century.
Starting from the 80s and 90s of the 20th century, the
scope of using artistic psychologism, its methods and
means in Uzbek storytelling began to expand. The
number of examples of creativity in which more
emphasis was placed on the depiction of the psyche
than on the depiction of events increased, and the
intellectual potential of the characters in the story
increased. As a result, two principles of artistic
psychologism began to dominate in modern Uzbek
storytelling:
1. Traditional method
2. Non-traditional method
Doctor of Philology M. Kuchkarova writes about the
fundamental changes taking place in modern Uzbek
storytelling: “It can be observed that Uzbek st
orytelling
is developing in two directions: traditional realistic and
non-traditional modernistic. Modern Uzbek writers,
combining the narrative genre with the creative
experiences of master Uzbek storytellers, as well as
classical world storytelling, are making extensive use of
symbolic-figurative images and modernist forms and
methods typical of Western literature in terms of style,
and are creating new artistic and aesthetic innovations
in storytelling. They include a deeper penetration into
the psyche of the hero, new visual means of artistic
psychologism, such as literary hallucination, illusion-
like images, the creation of new symbolic and
psychological images, and even an artistic and romantic
texture created by the writer's fantasy. interpretation
of images is also found.
In our current storytelling, analyzing a person from a
socio-psychological perspective is one of the important
features of research. Revealing issues such as the role
and dignity of a person in society through the mental
image of the hero, the evolution and turmoil taking
place in human psychology is one of the characteristic
features of today's stories. In modern works, in the
depiction of the psyche, tools such as inner speech,
dreams, and scenes of the inner evolution of the soul
take precedence, and behavioral forms are in the
second place, which is also seen in the style of Ne'mat
Arslon. The works "Kovul Guli" and "Oy Jodusi" can be
called inner-speech-monologue stories. This is because
in them, both the event and experience, as well as
other elements that complete the plot, are built on the
basis of the monologue of the hero or narrator. Indeed,
“a speech
-monologue that analyzes the difficult mental
states of the heroes, their hidden and unspoken
American Journal Of Social Sciences And Humanity Research
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American Journal Of Social Sciences And Humanity Research (ISSN: 2771-2141)
suffering, and conveys them to the reader without
making a sound” is very suitable for the character of
these stories.
The differences between literary genres require that
their possibilities for mental imagery also vary.
Naturally, the narrative genre has its own
characteristics in this regard and differs from large-
scale works such as novels or short stories. Although
the story is a small genre, it usually captures the most
important event that made a turning point in the fate
of the hero, and for this reason, the possibilities for
menta
l imagery in this genre are very wide. “If we
proceed from the ideas put forward in the stories of the
period that we have taken as the object of study, the
inherent contradiction of the era is the discrepancy
between understanding and not understanding a
person. In our stories, the attempt to understand
people with different destinies, regardless of what kind
of person they are, is intensified.” In modern
storytelling, spiritual and moral issues naturally form
the core of the content of stories. The manifestations
of conflict in them are manifested not only in the form
of individual and society, interpersonal conflicts, but
more in the form of a person overcoming himself,
working with his "I", analyzing character flaws and
fighting against them. This indicates that the attention
and focus of our writers have completely shifted to the
psyche of the individual, to the human heart.
Expressing a reaction to social laws and processes
through the analysis of human experiences, and their
artistic and aesthetic evaluation are among the leading
principles of our current storytelling. Intellectualization
is expressed, first of all, in the hero's analytical,
comparative, critical and reflective reflection on his
past. The heroes of our stories began to become
images that do not accept events as they are, do not
blindly accept ready-made values, but only draw
certain conclusions after thinking and reflecting on
what they have learned. The formation of a spiritual
image and its realization in certain artistic genres is
manifested in modern Uzbek storytelling in a unique
way. Because the spiritual image does not only serve
the writer's artistic intention, but also embodies the
will, dreams and worldview of today's society,
humanity, and how it sees the future. By the 1980s, a
period began in modern Uzbek storytelling when the
spiritual image took on a special place. During this
period, the scope of describing human experiences and
transformations in consciousness, emotions, and
internal conflict increased. In the stories of the new
generation of writers Erkin A'zam, Ahmad A'zam,
Khurshid Do'stmuhammad, Nazar Eshonkul and others,
it is noticeable that not only the deepening of the
spiritual image, the disclosure of the hero's psyche in
certain episodes and situations, but now full-fledged
psychological images are being created. In the words of
Nazar Eshonkul, the image of a "man talking to himself"
has appeared in literature. Nazar Eshonkul applies this
idea to the heroes of Ahmad A'zam. However, as a
result of our observations, it became clear that during
this period, not only in the works of A. A'zam, but also
in the works of several other writers, in particular, in
the works of the writer we are studying within the
framework of the research - N. Arslon, the image of a
person trying to understand his "I", awake, searching
for himself, was embodied. The works of short story
writers of this generation
–
E. A’zam, H.
Do’stmuhammad and N. Eshonkul –
are valuable in that
they carefully depict the psychology of the hero in all
its nua
nces, all its complexities and subtleties. “Most of
the shortcomings in literature today are due to
shortcomings in the depiction of the psyche. If a writer
wants to reliably portray the reality he wants to
describe and the hero moving in it, he must deeply feel
the human psyche while maintaining a vital balance.
This makes it possible to show the hero in different
guises depending on different life situations, to reliably
depict him in sad and happy situations.” Indeed, writers
who have their place in modern short stories, such as
Ne’mat Arslon, Shuhrat Matkarim and Muhammad
Sharif, are making good use of this opportunity to
create unique psychological images. The changes in the
social environment, political system and lifestyle that
our contemporaries have made in their minds, the
spiritual evolution and unstable mood of people, the
hardships they endured on the way to losing and
finding their identity, and finally the flickering of a spark
of hope that barely lives in their hearts, have taken a
worthy place in the treasury of Uzbek storytelling.
In short, the new possibilities of psychological imagery
have led to an increase in the analysis of internal
conflict. In addition to various psychological collisions,
the contradictions between the individual and society,
the individual and the situation, the past and the
present have formed the core of the work. Uzbek
storytelling has truly undergone a multi-faceted
renewal, a rise to a higher level in describing human
phenomena.
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