OPPOSITION AND IMPLICIT EVALUATION IN THE SATIRICAL POETICS OF ZAVQIY AND CHARLES DICKENS

Abstract

This article examines how semantic opposition and implicit evaluation generate satirical meaning in the poetry of the nineteenth-century Uzbek poet Zavqiy and Charles Dickens’s novel Hard Times. The comparison addresses a methodological difficulty: Zavqiy’s satire is concentrated within the couplet or stanza, whereas Dickens’s evaluative design develops through narration, characterization, and extended context. To avoid equating unlike genres, the study compares the function and textual location of opposition rather than the external form of the works. The material comprises representative passages built on tazod and antithesis, oxymoron, kinoya and irony. Comparative-typological, functional-stylistic, and contextual-semantic analysis shows that both writers expose a discrepancy between public claim and actual condition. In Zavqiy, contrary lexical units are commonly placed side by side and the satirical judgment is completed within a short poetic unit. In Dickens, opposition often unfolds across a sentence or narrative episode; apparently positive expressions acquire negative force through context. Oxymoron is especially productive in Hard Times because it compresses the contradiction between performed identity and moral reality into a single phrase. The findings demonstrate that the major difference lies not in the presence of opposition itself but in the placement of evaluative negation: immediate and line-bound in Zavqiy, delayed and context-dependent in Dickens. This distinction provides a workable basis for comparing satirical discourse across lyrical poetry and the Victorian novel.