This article explores the concept of polyphonism as developed in literary theory and investigates how it manifests across two distinct yet comparable prose traditions: English and Uzbek. Building on M. M. Bakhtin’s theorization of the polyphonic novel as a dialogic field of autonomous voices, the study reconsiders polyphony not simply as a multiplicity of characters, but as a compositional principle that distributes authorial intention across heterogeneous speech types, temporal planes, and ideological stances. The research aims to show how English modernist and postmodernist prose—exemplified by James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner—constructs polyphony through interior monologue, free indirect discourse, and perspectival montage, while Uzbek prose—from Abdulla Qodiriy and Choʻlpon to Oʻtkir Hoshimov, Togʻay Murod, and Pirimqul Qodirov—realizes a cognate multi-voicedness through layered narrators, embedded oral registers, and dialogic confrontations of tradition and modernity. Methodologically, the article employs comparative close reading aligned with narratological tools drawn from Genette, Cohn, and Rimmon-Kenan, attending to focalization, discourse modes, and the distribution of ideological authority. The results indicate both convergences and divergences: English texts tend to radicalize subjectivity and temporal fragmentation to achieve polyphony, whereas Uzbek prose often integrates social polyglossia and cultural memory to orchestrate dialogic plurality within a more overtly ethical frame. The conclusion argues for a flexible, culturally sensitive definition of polyphonism that accounts for typological overlap while respecting each tradition’s specific historical and linguistic ecology.

Polyphony, dialogism, comparative poetics, English modernism

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