abstract
"Stream of consciousness" was originally a term in western psychology, and it was first seen in the paper "On Several Problems Neglected by Introspective Psychology" by American psychologist william james. He believes that human consciousness is a continuous process. Consciousness is not a connection of fragments, but a flow. This is the first time that the concept of "stream of consciousness" has been formally put forward in psychology.
At the beginning of 20th century, French philosopher henri bergson's "Continuity Theory" emphasized the continuity and variability of life impulse. His distinction between "psychological time" and "spatial time", the importance of intuition, and Austrian psychoanalyst Freud's theory of unconscious structure and the relationship between dreams and art have all had a great influence on the development of stream-of-consciousness literature.
Academic circles generally believe that stream of consciousness is the embodiment of symbolism literature in the field of novels. However, due to its unique skills and high achievements, stream-of-consciousness literature is usually regarded as an independent literary genre.
Theoretical proposition
Stream-of-consciousness novelists advocate objectively and spontaneously reproducing the "truth" felt by the characters on paper, oppose the writing style of traditional novels that introduces the life experience and external environment of the characters and occasionally stands up and comments, and ask the authors to "quit the novel". This idea was first put forward by American writer Henry James, and later Eliot's "depersonalization" theory also expressed a similar idea.
James Joyce, the representative figure of stream-of-consciousness literature, regards the drama that destroys the author's personality as the highest aesthetic form and tries to achieve this goal in his novels. Joyce believes that works are independent and self-sufficient organic structures insulated from external things. As a ready-made work of art, it has nothing to do with society and history, or even with the author himself. Because social and historical factors and the author's thoughts and feelings are only creative materials, they have been "artistic" and "formalized" after entering the work, and are no longer the original appearance.
technology
talk to oneself
Under the assumption that no one else is listening, a character directly reveals his feelings and thoughts without scruple, which is an "inner monologue". This is the most commonly used technique in stream-of-consciousness literature. Joyce's Ulysses contains many monologues. Its characteristic is that the author's behavior is completely invisible in the monologue, which is purely the true consciousness of the characters themselves in the novel. This inner monologue is called "direct inner monologue".
There is also an "indirect inner monologue", which describes the inner activities of the characters, but the author comes out from time to time to give directions and explanations. This kind of inner monologue usually shows a shallow level of consciousness, which is more coherent and logical, and its language form is more normal than "direct inner monologue".
Internal analysis
The so-called "inner analysis" refers to the narrator or character in the novel's rational analysis and pursuit of his own thoughts and feelings, which is carried out without others listening. The difference between it and "inner monologue" is that it is guided by reason, reasoning or explaining logically and orderly, rather than letting consciousness flow naturally. This technique is widely used in Proust's Searching for Lost Time. Some researchers in Britain and America categorically deny that Proust is a novelist of stream of consciousness, mainly because his "inner monologue" is only an "inner analysis" of admissibility control, not a completely natural stream of consciousness.
Space-time montage
Science fiction mainly analyzes the emotions, consciousness, thoughts, activities and attitudes of characters' consciousness and subconscious level, or directly constructs works with the conscious activities of characters.
Edit the development process of this paragraph.
The pioneer of psychological novels is Stendhal, a French writer in the19th century. Stendhal is good at psychological description. He is absorbed in people's psychological phenomena and ignores everything else. The psychological description of psychological novels reflects the development level of psychology in19th century. His psychological description is a psychological reflection on the conscious level, which is limited to the rational analysis of the mind and feelings, and does not involve the reflection of the physiological state on the subconscious level. Therefore, his psychological description is very calm and rational, full of logic and rationality, showing the characteristics of strong personality and realistic attitude. Stendhal's psychological description is divided into two levels: social psychology and love psychology, which describes the overall psychological state and mental outlook of the times and carefully analyzes the subtle changes and development process of love psychology. His expression of the inner tension of the characters has the characteristics of modern consciousness. Therefore, he is called "the father of modern novels". Because of the "modernity" of his psychological consciousness, he still has a wide audience all over the world. The masterpiece Red and Black (1830). /kloc-The famous psychological novels in the 9th century include Emma in Austin (18 16), Madame Bovary by Flaubert (1857) and Anna karenin by Tolstoy (1877). The plot of psychological novels is usually simple, and the representative works of psychological description are mainly constructed through the psychological description of characters. One is to directly describe the psychological activities of the characters, including their thoughts and inner monologues. The leading words used to describe the psychological activities of characters in novels are usually "He thinks", "He keeps thinking", "He talks to himself", "I think" and "I speak in my heart", which is a set of traditional psychological descriptions. Psychological novels developed into stream-of-consciousness novels in the 20th century. Stream-of-consciousness novels rose in Britain in the 1920s and spread to European and American countries. Stream-of-consciousness novels are the product of western modern social consciousness, and their theoretical basis is Bergson's intuitionism, Freud's psychoanalysis and william james's psychology. The concept of "stream of consciousness" was put forward by James, who believed that people's conscious activities were like a river, an uninterrupted flow of subjective ideology.
Montage is a series of techniques used to express the multiplicity of things in movies, such as "multi-angle", "slow motion", "close-up" and "flashback". Stream of consciousness novelists often use this technique in order to break through the limitation of time and space and show the variability and complexity of stream of consciousness.
The stream-of-consciousness writers who use this technique most include Adeline Virginia Woolf and william faulkner.
Poetry and music
In order to strengthen the symbolic effect, stream-of-consciousness novelists sometimes use poetry and music. They widely use image metaphor, action structure, rhythm, punctuation and even bizarre spelling to imply the feelings, impressions, psychological state or meaning of the characters at a certain moment. The language of Woolf's Waves is very similar to imagist poetry. Chapter 1 1 in Joyce's Ulysses the siren uses the structure of Bach fugue.
Psychological novels are not a unified literary genre, and there is no recognized unified definition. It is characterized by breaking the single and linear development structure formed by traditional novels basically according to the sequence of story plots or the logical connection between plots. The narrative of the story does not advance in a straight line in chronological order, but organizes the story through free association with people's conscious activities. The arrangement of the story and the connection of the plot are generally not limited by time, space or logic, causality, and often show the jump and change of time and space, and there is no close logical connection between the two scenes in time and place. Time often crosses or overlaps in the past, present and future. This kind of novel often centers on an event that was happening at that time. Through the trigger, people's conscious activities are constantly expanding and contracting in all directions, and after repeated cycles, a three-dimensional structure with branches and vines is formed. Recognized representative novels of stream of consciousness include Andrei Bailey's Petersburg, Proust's Memories of Time Past, Woolf's To the Lighthouse, Waves and so on.