Ideas of Enlightenment and Social Reform in English Modernist and Uzbek Jadid Literature: A Comparative Literary Analysis

This article examines the representation of enlightenment and social reform in English modernist literature and Uzbek Jadid literature through a comparative literary approach. The early twentieth century was a period of profound cultural, social, and intellectual transformation in both Europe and Central Asia. English modernist writers responded to the crisis of industrial civilization, war trauma, urban alienation, and the fragmentation of individual consciousness. Uzbek Jadid writers, by contrast, addressed the urgent need for educational reform, cultural awakening, national self-consciousness, and social renewal within the colonial and traditional social environment of Turkestan. Although these two literary traditions emerged in different historical and cultural contexts, both used literature as a critical medium for diagnosing social crisis and imagining new forms of human, moral, and cultural development. The study employs comparative-historical, typological, and thematic methods. Selected works and literary ideas associated with T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, Mahmudkhoja Behbudiy, Abdulla Avloniy, Abdurauf Fitrat, and Cho‘lpon are analyzed to identify convergences and distinctions in their treatment of enlightenment and reform. The findings show that in Uzbek Jadid literature, enlightenment is mainly expressed through education, moral discipline, national awakening, and the modernization of social institutions. In English modernism, enlightenment appears more indirectly through the critique of spiritual emptiness, fragmented consciousness, moral uncertainty, and the crisis of modern civilization. The article argues that Uzbek Jadid literature should not be viewed only as a regional reformist movement, but also as part of a broader global discourse of literary modernity, intellectual awakening, and cultural transformation.