Iryna
Nikolaichuk
Prof.
Yaroslava Fedoriv
English
for Master Programs
April
2013
Reconsideration Modernistic Phenomenon in
Postmodernism: ‘Stream of Consciousness’
Outline
I.
Introduction
II.
Main
Body
a)
The
problem of defining the term
b)
Genealogy
of the concept: combination of psychological, aesthetical, and literary aspects
c)
Key
characteristics and distinguishing features of the concept
III. Conclusion
I.
Introduction
For
humanities, as for any other area of science, not only synchronistical, but
also diachronic aspect is important while taking into consideration some
scientific problems. But sometimes attention paid to both of these aspects is
misbalanced and it can cause over-analyzing of some concepts or phenomena in
synchronistical aspect, but ignoring diachronic one, and vice versa. Keeping
this balance during the process of analysis is very important, but sometimes it
is a difficult task for a number of researchers to define whether or not
concrete phenomenon, which is associated with exact period of history, needs
re-analysis in another period with another criteria and model of thinking. For
example, in a literary criticism there is a tendency of earning scientific
interest to phenomena of literary modernism, which are noticeably distanced in
time from their contemporary researchers, in order to reconsider them according
to the categories of postmodern way of thinking–and this direction of literary
science seems to be very effective. This tendency can be brightly illustrated
by taking into consideration one of the most noticeable terminological and
stylistic innovations of modernism, which is named ‘stream of consciousness’.
Formed and defined in the first two decades of twentieth century, this concept
still remains the point of interest for many contemporary researchers. But
‘stream of consciousness’ and the history of its critical analysis during the
last century makes an example of modernistic phenomenon which is already being
over-analyzed from many different aspects What is more, ‘stream of
consciousness’ is defined in contemporary literary criticism as one of the most
controversial concepts. In order to clarify the explanation of the term ‘stream
of consciousness’, define its special characteristic as a concept, and avoid
mixing it with other phenomena from the field of narrative techniques it should
be reconsidered in the terms of contemporary literary criticism.
II.
Main Body
a)
The problem of defining the term
The first
problem researchers may face while analyzing modernistic phenomena of ‘stream
of consciousness’ is connected with the process of defining. Each of critical
works which considers ‘stream of consciousness’ as a research object tries to
state its own definition of this term–as a result, there is a very noticeable
number of definitions of this concept and there is no need to reconsider the
concept of ‘stream of consciousness’ in order to invent more of them. But the
actual problem is that different researchers with their points of view often
refer in their works not to the exact meaning of the term, but to their own
interpretation of it. For example, Dorrit Cohn in her monograph Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction defines ‘stream of consciousness’ as a special kind
of another narrative technique–‘interior monologue’, and explains it from two
different aspects:
A narrative technique for presenting a character`s consciousness by direct quotation of his thoughts in a surrounding narrative context; 2. a narrative genre constituted in its entirely by the silent self-communion of a fictional mind[1]
(15).
Another point of view is represented in Robert
Humphrey’s work Stream of Consciousness in the Modern Novel; the author emphasizes the need to use term ‘stream of
consciousness’ only metaphorically:
If, then, the term ‘stream of consciousness’ (I shall use it since it is already established as a literary label) is reserved for indicating an approach to the presentation of psychological aspects of character in fiction. .
. We may define the stream-of-consciousness fiction as a type of fiction in which the basic emphasis is placed or exploration of the prespeech levels of consciousness for the purpose, primarily, of revealing the psychic being of the character
(2-4).
The most ‘common’ definition is given in A Glossary of Literary Terms, and the
authors of this work clearly explain ‘stream of consciousness’ as separate
narrative mode:
Stream of consciousness’ is the name applied specifically to a mode of narration that undertakes to reproduce the full spectrum and continuous flow of a character`s mental processes, in which sense perceptions mingle with conscious and half-conscious thoughts, memories, expectations, feelings, and random associations[2]
(380).
As can be seen, some of the researchers for different
reasons define ‘stream of consciousness’ not as a special narrative technique,
but as a part of another concept or just as a ‘literary label’ which is used
only because of tradition. This tendency can be the explanation of another one,
which is mixing of meaning of some concepts–for example, ‘stream of
consciousness’ and ‘interior monologue’.
b)
Genealogy
of the concept: combination of psychological, aesthetical, and literary aspects
Another
important and controversial aspect of critical analysis of ‘stream of
consciousness’ as a literary phenomenon of modernism is the problem of its
genealogy. The term itself was formulated in 1890s by American psychologist
William James in his ‘program’ work Principles
of Psychology. In the chapter IX of this work which is called “The Stream
of Thought”, William James created his own conception of human consciousness
and phenomenon of thinking. The author gave many characteristics of thought
from different sights illustrating his hypothesis with practical examples. He
also formulated the idea of ‘stream of consciousness’ as the main
characteristic of the process of thinking which means that thoughts in human
mind are presented as a continuous undividable flow.[3] In
literature, especially in British context, this phenomenon was described and
discussed actually before the term was invented. In 1884 British novelist and
literary critic Henry James in his article “The Art of Fiction” declared that
there is no need to seek for an implication of ‘real’ life or objective truth
in fiction—it develops a special, aesthetical truth,
and only this can be judged while evaluating literature. He also
emphasized that not very long time ago (which means–in the middle of XIX
century) British novel was supposed to be, in the French terms, discutable, and it did not have its own
theory and a consciousness as the result of artistic choice. But art is only
possible through the experiment, discussion and comparison of the views (James
“The Art of Fiction”)[4].
This declaration had a special meaning for modernism as a literary period,
because it was one of the first descriptions of new tendencies in art system
and particularly in literature. But the complete combination of psychological
conception created by William James with the realizing of possibility of usage
of ‘stream of consciousness’ as a literary category was done in theoretical and
novelistic works of British writer, literary critic, and publicist Virginia
Woolf. In the collection of essays The
Common Reader which was firstly published in 1925, the author describes
‘stream of consciousness’ (borrowing this term from William James’s researches)
as a new literary method, completely different mode of narration which can
express the ‘modernity’ as a special type of world-view through presenting in
literature chaotic, uncontrolled flow of human thoughts:
The mind
receives a myriad impressions: trivial, fantastic, evanescent. . . From all
sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms. . . ; so that, if a
writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what he chose, not
what he must, if he could base his work upon his own feeling and not upon
convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or
catastrophe in the accepted style” (“Modern Fiction” 61).
To summarize, when taking into consideration
‘stream of consciousness’ as a literary phenomenon it is reasonable to remember
about features of its genealogy–‘stream of consciousness’ represents a type of
a literary category which was not invented ‘in literature for literature’, but
was borrowed from psychological works and then transformed. This fact also
emphasizes special needs of modernism as the art system which has to accumulate
knowledge from different fields of science in order to find new methods and
techniques of art expression.
c)
Key
characteristics and distinguishing features of the concept
One more issue which confirms the need to reconsider the concept of
‘stream of consciousness’ is mixing its meaning and characteristics with other
terms related to field of literary techniques–for example, with ‘interior
monologue’, narrative technique which was invented in realism to express some
special features of psychology of fictional character. But there is still a tendency of estimating terms ‘interior monologue’ and ‘stream of consciousness’ as two different names for the one narrative
technique, and this misunderstanding makes a serious problem for researchers.
Interior monologue and stream of consciousness as actually two different
concepts, however, have a number of similarities and differences in their
functions in the text as narrative techniques, lexical and syntactical features
of their implication in literary writing, and the message they provide. It is
true that interior monologue and stream of consciousness are similar when speaking
about how they are functioning in the text–both
interior monologue and stream of consciousness are narrative techniques whose
main aim in literary writing is to describe a psychology of a fictional
character. But interior monologue very often is a kind of third-person
narration, whereas stream of
consciousness almost always presents first-person type of narration. Like interior monologue, stream of consciousness
provides special
lexical and syntactical features when
is implicated in the text. On the other hand, interior monologue expresses with usual syntax forms and almost excludes lexical innovations, and stream of consciousness always uses unstructured and disordered forms of syntax (or ignores syntax rules at all) and very often has unusual (sometimes even invented by author) words or lexical forms. Speaking about the main messages that are provided by these two narrative techniques,
although both interior monologue and stream of consciousness aim to demonstrate
thoughts and emotions of fictional characters, they completely differ in
meaning. Interior monologue is a form of communication between fictional characters or a self-communication
of the character; however, stream of consciousness is non-communicative at all–it only represents chaotic, illogical flow of
one’s mind. As can be seen, interior
monologue and stream of consciousness are both narrative techniques which are
using in literary writing to make it more psychologically expressive, but there
is no possibility to consider these two terms as the same concept (Nikolaichuk 89)[5]. Furthermore, this mixing of meanings
seems to be inappropriate due to the fact that there is so long and noticeable
tradition of so-called ‘stream-of-consciousness novel’ (which is represented by
works of James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Richardson, William Faulkner and
later writers) that ‘stream of consciousness’ can be considered as a special
type of narrative voice which gives the (almost always first-person) narrator’s perspective
through reproduction of the thought processes (as opposed to simply spoken
words) of the fictional character. And, according to its characteristics,
‘stream of consciousness’ narrative voice can have its special position in a
system of narrative voices– character voice which represents the text as a result of
narration done by one of the fictional characters, epistolary
voice that describes the plot through the series of letters or
other documents, and third-person voice which
includes the group of narrative
techniques referring to the category of the third-person view (it can be
subjective, when the plot is represented through reflections of one of the
fictional characters; or objective, when the author appears in a role of the
narrator) (Nikolaichuk 5)[6].
To sum up, ‘stream of consciousness’ as a narrative technique has its special
characteristics which make impossible either to mix its meaning with the
meaning of other concepts or to consider it to be a part of other phenomena.
That is why while defining ‘stream of consciousness’ in their works some of the
researchers are mistaken, and this is to be avoided.
III. Conclusion
It can be
concluded that the example of ‘stream of consciousness’ in the aspects of the
tradition of its literary usage and the history of its scientific consideration
brightly illustrates the need of reconsideration of the concepts of literary
modernism in the terms of postmodernism. ‘Stream of consciousness’ as a term
itself and as a phenomenon, both psychological and literary, had deep
theoretical argumentation and noticeable practical embodiment in works of
modern writers. All the special features of this concept were formulated at the
very beginning of its literary usage, but later researches in this field formed
tendencies of free interpretations of this term while defining it in their
works and explanation of it as a part of other concepts. However, existing
knowledge about some modernistic concepts, in our case ‘stream of
consciousness’, needs re-systematization
and re-analysis in highly distanced in time from modernistic way of thinking
postmodern outlook because modernism as cultural and literary phenomenon still
is under non-scientific and non-objective stereotypes which are to be destroyed
by contemporary researches. And the main problem which appears while analyzing
the postmodern image of modernism is that these stereotypes were created by
researchers whose conclusions were based on the works of other researchers, but
not on the actual sources which are widely available–letters, diaries,
newspapers, and different art objects. Modernistic category of ‘stream of
consciousness’, therefore, can be clarified in new cultural and ideological
space and can still be the point of interest for a literary criticism.
Works
Cited
MLA
style
Abrams, Meyer
Howard, Harpham, Geoffrey Calt. A Glossary of Literary Terms. books.google.com.ua. Web. 9 April 2013.
Cohn,
Dorrit. Transparent Minds: Narrative
Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Books.google.com.ua. Web. 9
April 2013.
Humphrey, Robert. Stream of Consciousness in the Modern Novel. books.google.com.ua. Web. 9 April 2013.
James,
Henry. “The Art of Fiction”. public.wsu.edu. Web. 9 April 2013.
James, William. “The Stream of Thought”. Principles of Psychology. psychclassics.yorku.ca. Web. 9 April 2013.
Nikolaichuk, Iryna. Narrative technique
of 'stream of consciousness' in British literature of modernism: James Joyce,
Virginia Woolf.
Instructor Rostyslav Semkiv. Kyiv, 2012. 100 p. Printed.
APA style
Abrams, M. H., Harpham, G. C. (2012). A Glossary of Literary Terms. Retrieved
from http://books.google.com.ua/books?id=SUEtEa9nUWQC&printsec=frontcover&hl=uk&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false.
Cohn, D. (1983). Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for
Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Retrieved from http://books.google.com.ua/books?id=dmIQoPdb1SgC&printsec=frontcover&hl=uk&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
Humphrey, R. (1954). Stream of Consciousness in the Modern Novel. Retrieved from http://books.google.com.ua/books?id=rHNKIqjMzHkC&printsec=frontcover&hl=uk&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
James,
H. “The Art of Fiction”. (September 1884). Longman's
Magazine. Retrieved
from http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/artfiction.html
James, W. (1892). “The Stream of Consciousness”. Psychology.
Retrieved from http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/jimmy11.htm
Nikolaichuk,
I. (2012). Narrative
technique of 'stream of consciousness' in British literature of modernism:
James Joyce, Virginia Woolf. Kyiv.
Woolf, V. (1925). The Common Reader:
First series. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company.
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