Name: Drashti Joshi
Batch: M.A. Sem.2 (2022-2024)
Enrollment N/o.: 4069206420220016
Roll N/o.: 05
Subject code & Paper N/o.: 22403 Paper: 110
Paper Name:- History of English Literature from 1900 to 2000
E-mail Address: drashtijoshi582@gmail.com
Submitted to: Smt. S.B. Gardi Department of English M.K.B.U.
Date of submission: 31 March 2023
This Blog is an Assignment of paper no.:110 History of English Literature from 1900 to 2000.In this assignment I am dealing with the topic of Stream Of Consciousness from History of the 20th Century.
Stream Of Consciousness
Definition:
In English Literature, Stream of Consciousness is a narrative device used by the novelist to make the reader know the thoughts and feelings of the characters present in the novel.A number of people often wonder what is the other name for the stream of consciousness novel. As it focuses on the inner feeling of the characters, Stream of Consciousness is often known as an internal monologue though both the terms have a slightly different meaning.
In Internal Monologue, the thoughts and feelings of the characters are often presented using logical progression from one idea to the other, whereas in Stream of Consciousness, the actual experience of thinking is presented in all its chaos and distress
Origin:
The term “stream of consciousness” was first used by William James in 1890 in his The Principles of Psychology. He used this term to explain the free flow of thoughts.
According to him “it is nothing joined; it flows. A ‘river’ or a ‘stream’ are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let’s call it the stream of thought, consciousness, or subjective life.”
This term was first used by the novelist May Sinclair in a literary context while discussing Dorothy Richardson’s novels. However, it was three novelists Dorthy Richardson, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce who used this concept in their works.
The term 'stream of consciousness' was first applied by Virginia Woolf to the latest innovation of the technique as well as the theme of the modern English novel. The kind of novel was entirely new and original. Marcel Proust in France, Dorothy Miller Richardson, an English woman and James Joyce, an Irishman wrote the modern psychological novels almost simultaneously between 913 and 1915. The novels turned fiction away from external to internal reality from the outer world to the hidden world of fantasy and reverie. Marcel Proust's Remembrance of things past; Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage and Joyce's 'A Portrait of the artist as a Young Man' have striking similarities. All these novels are voyages through consciousness.
Characteristics:
Following are the main characteristics of the stream of consciousness novel:
The Stream of Consciousness is characterised by ample thoughts and images. The technique lacks punctuation and associative leaps.
This technique is different from Dramatic Monologue and Soliloquy as in the latter the speaker addresses another person or audience whereas, in the former, the thoughts remain in the mind of the character.
Dramatic Monologue and Soliloquy is associated with the poetry whereas Stream of Consciousness is associated with the novel.
Today it has also been used in drama and movies.
It emerged during the early twentieth-century modernist movement.
The significant feature of contemporary fiction is the movement towards greater inwardness. Stream of Consciousness literary technique first used in the late 19th century employed to evince subjective as well as objective reality. It reveals the characters, feelings, thoughts and actions, often following and associative rather than a logical sequence without commentary by the author. It has a progression in the direction of inwardness of the characters from the earliest impression.
This is sheer psychology and seems to echo the very words of Freud himself. It means that human experiences come in some exceptional moments and not the ordinary deeds of everyday life. Time is no factor in determining the length of life. The morning and the evening do not constitute one day. A morning or evening might represent eternity (the 'instant made eternity' as Browning has put it). Thus one person's whole life story has no greater time-value than the twenty four hours in the life of another. "One crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name." Hence if life is a complicated succession of experiences, the novelist whose aim is to present life, must "record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, trace the pattern however disconnected and incoherent in appearance which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness".
What Is the Purpose of Stream of Consciousness Writing?
Stream of consciousness writing allows authors to provide a more intimate portrayal of their subjects. It prevents them from being confined to physical descriptions or accounts of spoken dialogue, which was a standard issue literary technique prior to the rise of the stream of consciousness approach. Via stream of consciousness writing, readers are able to track characters’ thoughts in real time, thus enabling them to understand not only what a character does but why they do it.
Function of Stream of Consciousness:
Stream of consciousness is a style of writing developed by a group of writers at the beginning of the 20th century. It aimed at expressing in words the flow of characters’ thoughts and feelings in their minds. The technique aspires to give readers the impression of being inside the minds of the characters. Therefore, the internal view of the minds of the characters sheds light on the plot and motivation in the novel.
Synonyms of Stream of Consciousness:
Stream of Consciousness has no other word or phrase as an exact meaning. However, the following words can be used interchangeably in general meanings such as apostrophe, association of ideas, chain of thought, interior monologue, monologue, aside, or a soliloquy.
This flow of feeling or consciousness over a long stretch of life - 'the stream of consciousness' follows no particular logical design or order. The great novelist who seeks to bring us into close touch with life, must therefore present this over-changing consciousness over a long stretch of life "the stream of consciousness" follows no particular logical design or order. The great novelist who seeks to bring us into close touch with life-must therefore present this over-changing consciousness, this flow of feelings, continuously affected by external contracts of incidents and ceaselessly transforming itself from within. Thus it is not a definite pattern of life but only scattered fragments of life, mostly inner, that the novelist aims at. The treatment is more or less psychological. It is the inner working of the mind that is the main concern of the novelist and there is little mixture of incidents or actions which are altogether alien or subordinate. Outward, events serve only as spring-boards of thought and the stage is shifted from the outward to the inward. As a result, plot, character, comedy, tragedy, love interests in fact all conventional elements of the novel are completely subordinate as they are not quite adequate to capture and communicate this stream of consciousness. This 'action' is almost banished from the novel and only psychological analysis of mind remains, making the novel succession of what is called the interior monologues' ' of the "hero or heroine" of the novel. The term 'interior monologues' means the device by which the dissociated fragments of thoughts passing through the mind are represented.
Many novelists use an in-depth analysis to describe the unspoken thoughts of conventional dialogue. But technically the trend was begun by the French novelist Dujardin's novel 'The Laurels'. The technique was adopted and developed by James Joyce himself D. Richardson, Virginia Woolf, M. Prout and others in English.
The ability to represent the flux of character throughout impressions, emotions and memories often without logical sequences or syntax marked a revolution in the form of the novel. The related phrase interior monologue is also used to describe the inner movement of consciousness in a character's mind. However Stream of Consciousness is often confused with interior monologue, but the letter technique works the sensation of the mind into a more formal pattern: flow of thoughts inwardly expressed similar to a soliloquy. The technique of Stream of Consciousness, however, attempts to portray the remote preconscious state that exists before the mind organised sensations. Consequently, the recreation of Stream of Consciousness frequently lacks the unity, explicit cohesion and selectivity of direct thoughts.
How to Write Stream of Consciousness?:
A writer must keep the following points in mind when writing in a stream of consciousness style.
It must be character-specific.
It must sync with the character’s world; profession, relations, work, near and dear ones, and even daily activities.
It must seem to follow the thoughts of that person.
It must have some links and pieces of evidence of the thought process.
It must not have a structure, grammar, or any other formal linguistic evidence unless it is recorded for an educational academic.
Examples of Stream of Consciousness in Literature:
The stream of consciousness style of writing is marked by the sudden rise of thoughts and lack of punctuation. The use of this narration style is generally associated with the modern novelist and short story writers of the 20th century. Let us analyse a few examples of the stream of consciousness narrative technique in literature:
1. James Joyce, Ulysses (1922).
-This novel tracks a single day in the life of Irishman Leopold Bloom. It contains long lengthy passages of stream of consciousness, truly mimicking a brain’s free-associative abilities. Joyce pushed this technique even further in later works, culminating in the arguably narrative-free Finnegan’s Wake.
“He is young Leopold, as in a retrospective arrangement, a mirror within a mirror (hey, presto!), he beholdeth himself. That young figure of then is seen, precious manly, walking on a nipping morning from the old house in Clanbrassil to the high school, his book satchel on him bandolier wise, and in it a goodly hunk of wheaten loaf, a mother’s thought.”
2. Samuel Beckett, Molloy (1951).
-Beckett used many of the same narrative techniques as his Irish contemporary Joyce. Most famous as a dramatist, Beckett placed streams of consciousness style monologues in the mouths of many of his characters and later applied the method to his novels.
3. Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1925).
-Woolf used stream of consciousness writing to articulate her characters’ inner monologues, both in this novel and others like To The Lighthouse.
“What a lark! What a plunge! For so it always seemed to me when, with a little squeak of the hinges, which I can hear now, I burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air. How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as I then was) solemn, feeling as I did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen …”
4. William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying (1930).
-Faulkner had already worked with stream of consciousness in earlier novels like The Sound and the Fury, but As I Lay Dying stood out in its method of narrating the novel through the perspective of 15 different characters, each of whom narrated in a stream of consciousness style.
“Well, it isn’t like they cost me anything,” I say. I saved them out and swapped a dozen of them for the sugar and flour. It isn’t like the cakes cost me anything, as Mr Tull himself realises that the eggs I saved were over and beyond what we had engaged to sell, so it was like we had found the eggs or they had been given to us.
“She ought to taken those cakes when she gives you her word,” Kate says. The Lord can see into the heart. If it is His will that some folks have different ideas of honesty from other folks, it is not my place to question His decree.”
5. Jack Kerouac, On the Road (1957).
-Kerouac’s novel stood out for using the stream of consciousness as actual narration. Via the largely autobiographical narrator Sal Paradise, Kerouac presents the story as a largely uninterrupted flow of ideas. Driving home the point was the fact that Kerouac typed the entire novel in epic bursts on a continuous roll of typewriter paper.
During the following week, he confided in Chad King that he absolutely had to learn how to write from him; Chad said I was a writer and he should come to me for advice. Meanwhile Dean had gotten a job in a parking lot, had a fight with Marylou in their Hoboken apartment – God knows why they went there – and she was so mad and so down deep vindictive that she reported to the police some false trumped-up hysterical crazy charge, and Dean had to lam from Hoboken. So he had no place to live. He came right out to Paterson, New Jersey, where I was living with my aunt, and one night while I was studying there was a knock on the door, and there was Dean, bowing, shuffling obsequiously in the dark of the hall, and saying, «Hello, you remember me – Dean Moriarty? I’ve come to ask you to show me how to write.
6. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes From Underground (1864).
-Decades before “stream of consciousness” became a literary term, authors were using it to create intimate portraits of their narrators. The technique was popular in Russian literary culture, with strong examples written by the likes of Tolstoy, Chekov, and Dostoevsky.
I have been going on like that for a long time—twenty years. Now I am forty. I used to be in the government service, but am no longer. I was a spiteful official. I was rude and took pleasure in being so. I did not take bribes, you see, so I was bound to find a recompense in that, at least. (A poor jest, but I will not scratch it out. I wrote it thinking it would sound very witty; but now that I have seen myself that I only wanted to show off in a despicable way, I will not scratch it out on purpose!)
Conclusion:
In conclusion, stream of consciousness technique is a great achievement of modern fiction. But, it is not a technique for its own sake, but rather it is based on a realisation of the drama that takes place in the mind of human beings. The stream of consciousness novelists have opened up a new area of human experience in fiction by adding mental function to the already established areas of human motive and human action in creating human-like character. While the traditional well-made novel was wide in scope for its characterization and depiction of the society, the stream of consciousness novelists have concentrated on the subjective lives of their characters. In this way, they achieved greater psychological depth.
Thank you so much for reading this blog and Assignment..
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