Artistic interpretations of the symbol of seven in Uzbek national literary thought

Abstract

The article examines the artistic and symbolic functions of the number seven in Uzbek national literary thought through the continuity between folklore and modern prose. It analyses seven as an ethical measure in proverbs, a marker of trial, transition, and heroic maturation in fairy tales and epic narratives, and an ironic, psychological, and philosophical symbol in contemporary short fiction. The primary materials include the epic Alpamysh, the folk tale Hasan and Huriliqo, Erkin A’zam’s The Seventh Fox, and Ulug‘bek Hamdam’s Journey. Historical-poetic, functional-semantic, comparative-typological, and hermeneutic methods are used to compare the compositional and semantic roles of the number across genres. The findings show that the stable semantic core of seven consists of trial, boundary crossing, maturation, and completion. This core is renewed as an ethical judgment in proverbs, heroic status in the epic, miraculous rescue in the tale, and a crisis of belief or inner recognition in modern fiction. The national specificity of seven therefore lies not in formal repetition but in its capacity to adapt meanings preserved in collective memory to the poetics of different periods. Journey is treated not as direct evidence of the number seven, but as a cautious semantic comparison involving the related motifs of travel and transition.