Ronic Discourse in Erkin A'zam's Dramatic Novella "Jannat O'zi Qaydadir"

In this study, the two-part dramatic novella titled “Jannat o‘zi qaydadir” by Erkin A’zam, one of the prominent writers of contemporary Uzbek literature, is examined from the perspective of irony. Set in post-independence Uzbekistan at the beginning of the new century, the work deals with the aspiration of the family of Domla, a scientist who rose during the Soviet era, to migrate to America and the disintegration experienced during this process. Methodologically, the study relies on D. C. Muecke’s framework of irony typology, as outlined in Irony and the Ironic, alongside Wayne C. Booth’s concept of "clues to irony" detailed in A Rhetoric of Irony. Guided by this theoretical paradigm, the study examines the ironic structures across seven key dimensions: verbal, situational, event-based, dramatic, name-identity, self-betraying, and intertextual-title ironies. The analytical findings reveal that the author guides the audience into an ironic perspective right from the outset via the epigraph from Chekhov and the notion of paradise in the title, additionally utilizing the character roster and stage directions as essential signposts of irony. The dramatic novella form, on the other hand, makes dramatic irony one of the fundamental elements of the work by establishing a structure where the reader knows more than the characters. Without resorting to explicit moralizing, the deployed ironies critique several prominent issues: the obsession with academic titles, the institutional devaluation of science, the subordination of national heritage to monetary gain, the hollow masking of Soviet-era identities, and the uncritical obsession with America. The “paradise” sought in America is lost both far away and close to home at the end of the work with the explosion in America and Domla's death in Jiydali. Consequently, this study reveals that Erkin A’zam uses irony not only as a figure of speech but as a fundamental narrative technique that constructs the entire structure of the work.