Publication Details
Abstract
Travel prose occupies a distinctive place in Karakalpak literature as a literary form that combines documentary narration with artistic representation of geographical space, cultural memory, and personal experience. Although individual travel essays have attracted scholarly attention, their poetics, particularly the interaction of road, space, time, and the image system, has not yet been examined systematically. This study investigates the artistic structure of Karakalpak travel prose through the analysis of four representative works: Eight Days in the United Arab Republic by J. Bazarbayev, Odessa Memoirs by O. Bekbawlov, The Tale of the Road by S. Saliyev, and The Beauty of the Land Lies in Its People by S. Saliyev and T. Matmuratov. The research employs comparative literary analysis, structural-poetic analysis, narratology, Bakhtin's theory of the chronotope, and Lotman's semiotic concept of artistic space. The findings demonstrate that the road functions not merely as a geographical route but as a philosophical and narrative category that structures the text. Artistic space acquires symbolic meanings through historical memory, natural landscapes, and cultural identity, while temporal organization is constructed through the interaction of historical, psychological, and autobiographical time. Furthermore, the image system is centered on the narrator, whose observations transform documentary travel into an artistic reflection on history, culture, and human existence. The study argues that Karakalpak travel prose should be regarded not simply as documentary writing but as an independent literary phenomenon possessing a complex poetic system comparable to the traditions of world travel writing.