Stream of consciousness is one of the misleading terms used by writers and critics. It is misleading because it sounds concrete, but it is as varied as "romanticism", "symbolism" and "surrealism"-even vague. To be exact, stream of consciousness is a phrase used by psychologists. It was created by psychologist william james, the founder of American pragmatism philosophy in the19th century, and refers to the continuous flow of human consciousness. James believes that people's thinking activities are not composed of separated and isolated parts, but a continuous "flow" containing all kinds of complicated feelings and thoughts.
The word "stream of consciousness" first appeared in books about psychology and was first put forward by American psychologist william james. In 1884, "On Several Problems Neglected by Introspective Psychology", he thinks that people's thinking activities are an inseparable and uninterrupted "flowing water". He said: "Consciousness is not a connection of fragments, but a constant flow." It is most natural to use the metaphor of "river" or "flowing water" to express it. After that, when we talk about it again, let's call it stream of consciousness, stream of consciousness or stream of subjective life. "Later, he elaborated in chapter 9 of Principles of Psychology (1890).
The concept of "stream of consciousness" put forward by James emphasizes uninterrupted thinking, that is, there is no "blank" and it is always "flowing"; It also emphasizes its super-temporality and super-spatiality, that is, it is not bound by time and space, because consciousness is a purely subjective thing that is not restricted by objective reality, and it can make the present and the past inseparable. This concept and its connotation directly influenced writers, and were used for reference by them, thus entering the literary field and acting on writers' creation, which led to the emergence of "stream of consciousness" literature.
In fact, James's psychological theory is not the only inducement for the emergence of stream-of-consciousness literature. Like other modernist literary schools, it is also a new literary territory excavated after people reoriented themselves in the new economic structure system with the high development of western capitalism in the 20th century.
In this social background, the popular western irrational philosophy and modern psychology provide a theoretical basis for the creation of stream-of-consciousness literature. The French philosopher Bergson (1859~ 194 1) emphasized that intuition is the only basis for understanding the world ontology. He believes that the noumenon of the world is "life impulse", that is, "the extension of consciousness". Only it is the only driving force for the operation of the universe, and objective things are nothing more than their external manifestations. Therefore, we can never grasp the nature of the world through rational analysis. Only through intuition can we acquire real knowledge, understand the world and solve all social problems. In his view, the subconscious should be the object of literature, and writers must go deep into people's inner world, even the subconscious field, and grasp what reason cannot provide; Break the traditional concept of time and work according to the structure of "psychological time". Another theorist who had a great influence on modernist literature, especially stream-of-consciousness literature, was the Austrian psychologist Freud (1856~ 1939). His full affirmation of subconsciousness and unconsciousness undoubtedly opened the horizon for stream-of-consciousness literature creation. The theory of subconsciousness and unconsciousness in his psychoanalysis aims at countering the traditional idea that "man is a rational animal". It is believed that subconscious and even unconscious are the basis of human vitality and conscious activity, and human behavior motivation comes from human instinctive impulse; The instinct impulse of human beings is often bound by social norms and rational conscience, which makes people full of contradictions. The creative activity of the Tussah family is a process of breaking through rationality, exerting instinctive impulse and releasing repressed instinct (libido).
The term "stream of consciousness" is obviously extremely useful in describing the psychological process, because as a rhetorical term, it has a double metaphorical meaning, that is to say, the word "consciousness" and the word "stream" have metaphorical meanings. This idea provides a theoretical basis for novelists to show people's inner world by means of stream of consciousness and complete the narrative of novels by showing the conscious activities of characters. The stream of consciousness in novels refers to the imitation of the continuous flow of characters in the narrative process of novels. Specifically, around the seemingly randomly generated and loosely logical consciousness center of the characters, all the scenes of the characters' observation, memory and association are interwoven with the feelings, thoughts, emotions and wishes of the characters, and the flow process of the characters' consciousness is described truthfully and accurately. In the history of modern western novels, James Joyce, Adeline Virginia Woolf, Faulkner and Kafka are all famous for their successful use of stream of consciousness.
The basic characteristics of stream-of-consciousness style The peak of stream-of-consciousness literature was basically concentrated in the 1920s and 1930s. Whether it is a literary genre or a creative method has long been controversial. In fact, it is difficult to be regarded as a literary genre in the strict sense. On the one hand, there is no communication between recognized stream-of-consciousness writers in creation, no declaration of purpose and no specific organization; On the other hand, stream-of-consciousness literature has developed for a long time. As early as the end of 19, this method was used in literary creation, but throughout the 20th century, there were still stream-of-consciousness literary works in different periods around the world. This situation is difficult to be covered by the concept of "literary genre".
Although stream-of-consciousness writers show great differences in creative ideas and artistic styles, for example, Proust can use "instinctive memories" to yearn for a magical power, arouse the beautiful pictures of the past from the subconscious, and retain happiness and happiness; Joyce, on the other hand, is keen to show the evil of human beings and the nature of animals, and to paint a chaotic picture full of darkness and blindness in conscious activities; Faulkner's stream of consciousness works are closely related to the living conditions of American southern society; On the other hand, Woolf's stream-of-consciousness novels are full of lyricism and aestheticism. However, stream-of-consciousness writers still show a series of fundamental similarities in their creation.
First of all, as far as the object of expression is concerned, stream-of-consciousness literature does not reflect real life like traditional realistic literature, describes the norms of typical characters, is completely self-centered, and focuses on the subconscious, subconscious and even unconscious inner world of people. In the opinion of stream-of-consciousness writers, realism and naturalism only reflect the external reality and superficial truth, but this external world is not real, and the real truth only exists in people's inner subjective world. Therefore, writers should focus on the description of people's spiritual world and write the inner truth of people. Starting from this literary concept, stream-of-consciousness writers shift their creative perspective from "outside" to "inside". The psychological and conscious activities of the characters in the novel are no longer a description method, no longer attached to the plot of the novel as a means to achieve some artistic effect, but appear in the works as independent performance objects. Conscious activities almost become the whole content of the work, while the plot is extremely diluted and retired behind the curtain of the novel language. Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury consists of four parts —— Bangui, Quentin, Jason and Dilcey —— all of which form the basic content of the novel through the complicated stream of consciousness of different characters, which is mixed with rationality and irrationality.
Because the stream-of-consciousness literature focuses on expressing people's consciousness, the narrative angle of writers has changed compared with traditional literature, and the narrative focus of stream-of-consciousness novels has completely shifted from external description to the presentation of inner activities, that is, the direct presentation of the process of stream-of-consciousness of characters. According to the categories of "zero focus", "internal focus" and "external focus" classified by French narrator Cinert, after the word "narrative focus" was invented by Wellek and Warren, most stream-of-consciousness literature chose the narrative angle of "internal focus". Internal focus means that the narrator knows as much as the characters. The novel only shows what a certain character or some characters think and hear, which is completely different from the "zero focus" mode in traditional realistic novels where the narrator knows everything. The narrator who adopts internal focus must follow the characters, and the vastness of the novel world depends entirely on the vision of the characters. When the character's viewpoint disappears, the order of narrative objects will be interrupted. For example, in the second chapter "Quentin Part" of The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner shows that Quentin's narrative is suddenly interrupted to show his suicide.
Secondly, the stream-of-consciousness literature does not structure its works according to the objective temporal and spatial order or the development process of events, but arranges the order of paragraphs in the novel according to the logic of conscious activities and the flow of consciousness, so that the content and form of the novel blend. Character consciousness permeates every picture of the work; It plays the role of internal connection with the structure of the work.
Human consciousness is complex, and rational and irrational consciousness coexist. There is a clear and complete consciousness, but also a sense of hazy fragments; There is a sense of speech level, a sense of pre-speech level that has not yet formed a language, and so on. These consciousnesses are mixed and appear alternately, and it is difficult to find a logical track from them. Time reversal and spatial overlap have become common situations in the conscious world. Stream-of-consciousness literature tries to truly show the flow of human consciousness, which makes it impossible for the contents of the works to be unfolded one by one in the normal time and space order, but to express the flow of consciousness according to "psychological time" (Bergson language) different from "spatial time". Faulkner said: "I can transfer these people like God, without the limitation of space or time. I set aside the time limit and randomly dispatched the characters in the book. The result was very successful, at least in my opinion. "
This "random scheduling" ability comes from the fact that consciousness itself is not limited by time and space. In The Sound and the Fury, the consciousness of Bangui and Quentin is constantly jumping, and there is no boundary between present, past and future. The contents of the book are upside down and the time is chaotic. The author does not explain or explain this, but reminds readers by changing the font or title. For example, the first chapter of the novel1April 7, 928, "That part of Bangui" is a passage:
We walked along the fence to the garden fence. Our shadows fell on the fence. On the fence, my shadow is higher than Lester's. We came to the gap and went through it.
"Wait a minute." Lester said. You're hanging on a nail again. Can't you just go through it and keep your clothes from hanging on the nail? "
Katie untied my clothes from the nail and we passed. Katie said that Uncle Murray took care of us and told us not to let anyone see us. Let's put the cat at our waist. Cat's waist, Shi Lei. Like this, you know. Our cat got off the bus and walked through the garden. Flowers rustled around us. The ground is tense and hard. We climbed over the fence again, and some pigs were sniffing around. Katie said, I guess they must be very sad because one of their partners was killed today. The ground is tense and hard, and it has been dug up, and it is large and uneven.
Katie said, "Put your hands in your pockets." . Otherwise it will freeze. It's almost Christmas. You don't want your hands to freeze, do you?
"It's too cold outside." Wilsh said. "Don't go out."
(Wilsh is a black boy of the Compson family, the eldest son of Dilcey. Three black boys served Bangui before and after. Wilsh before 1905, and Dilcey's youngest son T? p？ Wilsh, "Current" 1928 is Dilcey's grandson Lester. Faulkner uses different black pages in his novels to indicate different time sequences. )
Because the writer broke the order of traditional novels, re-established the order of time and space, and under the action of feeling, stimulation, memory and association, he truly presented the chaos, multi-level three-dimensional feelings and consciousness dynamics of the characters in the novels, so readers can always experience the moment that the characters in the works experienced-psychological time. The last chapter of Joyce's Ulysses describes the heroine Molly's sleepy state, and her consciousness floats freely and vaguely, and finally disappears completely. The whole paragraph does not use punctuation marks and sentences, which shows the uninterrupted flow of consciousness.
The most commonly used technique in stream-of-consciousness novels is 1, direct inner monologue. Direct inner monologue is a kind of monologue. To describe such a monologue, there is neither the author nor a hypothetical audience. It can directly show the consciousness to the reader without the author telling the reader this and that as an intermediary. That is to say, the author, together with his quotations such as "He said" and "He thought" and his explanatory remarks, are all from the page.
2. Indirect inner monologues Indirect inner monologues show some unspeakable materials through an omniscient author, as if they flow directly from the consciousness of the characters; The author provides readers with a guide to reading monologues through comments and descriptions.
3. Omniscient description and dramatic monologue Omniscient description means that an omniscient writer participates in the process of describing the spiritual content and consciousness activities of the characters, and describes this consciousness with traditional narrative and description methods. Dramatic monologues go directly from characters to readers, without the intervention of the author, but there are a group of imaginary audiences. The depth of consciousness it expresses is limited, unlike the inner monologue without reservation.
Edouard Dujardin (186 1 ~ 1949) is a representative writer of stream of consciousness.
/kloc-at the end of 0/9, French writer Ai Du? Dujardin published the novel "Cut Laurel". This work is regarded as the pioneer of stream-of-consciousness literature by later generations because it always adopts the artistic technique of "inner monologue". After entering the 20th century, stream-of-consciousness writers perfected the creative method of stream-of-consciousness and made it mature. Around the 1920s, stream-of-consciousness literature entered a period of prosperity.
Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
The founder of stream of consciousness literature is the French writer Marcel? Proust. His masterpiece, The Seven-volume novel Memories of Time Past, practices the author's artistic view of "subjective truth" and is a simple model of stream-of-consciousness literature. This work laid the foundation for the development of stream-of-consciousness literature.
Virginia Woolf (1882— 194 1)
Virginia, a famous British novelist and critic? Woolf is also a famous writer of stream of consciousness and the founder of stream of consciousness novels. On the basis of summarizing and drawing lessons from the works of some stream-of-consciousness novelists, she enriched and developed the expression techniques of stream-of-consciousness literature and expounded them theoretically. 19 19, Woolf published her first stream-of-consciousness novel Spots on the Wall. The work reveals the richness and variability of people's inner world through the flow of consciousness caused by a woman seeing a vague point on the wall. Mrs dalloway (1925) and to the lighthouse (1927) are representative novels of Woolf's stream of consciousness. The former shows that Mrs. Dalloway saw her old lover Peter again at the family party and learned that a psychopath committed suicide nearby, and their consciousness jumped a lot; The latter uses a lot of symbolic techniques to express the author's yearning for the other side of the world beyond fame and fortune and grievances, and presents the readers with the deep consciousness of the characters.
Woolf's novels do not pay attention to the relationship between events and characters, but pay attention to the reproduction of characters' thoughts and feelings, and pay attention to the impression effect of environment and scenery description. Her writing is full of musicality, and she gives readers a sense of beauty with her musical "formalism" structure works.
James Joyce (1882— 194 1)
Irish writer James? Joyce (1882— 194 1) is one of the representative writers of stream-of-consciousness literature. He comes from a middle-class family in Dublin, and his family gradually declined after his birth. He made up his mind to devote himself to literary career very early, trying to objectively express people's inner true aesthetic ideals through creation. From 65438 to 0902, Joyce went to Paris to study medicine. Since then, she has lived in many European countries from time to time and devoted herself to literary creation.
Joyce's works never leave Dublin people and their lives. The early collection of short stories in Dubliners (19 14) is composed of 15 short stories with the same theme, which describes the diverse lives of the middle and lower class citizens in Dublin and has a distinct realistic tendency. A Portrait of an Artist's Youth (19 16) is a turning point in Joyce's ideological and artistic development. In his works, a large number of expressions commonly used in stream-of-consciousness literature, such as inner monologues, staggered time and space, free association, are used to reveal the inner world of the protagonist from childhood to youth. The author's brushwork has reached the level of the protagonist's subconscious. The novel Wake for Finnegan (1939), written in his later years, is full of fables. In the whole process, he told it in fantastic language, expressing the central theme of death and resurrection that appeared repeatedly in human history. The language is obscure, and new words abound, making it difficult to understand.
The novel Ulysses (1922), which took eight years to complete, is Joyce's masterpiece and also the masterpiece of stream-of-consciousness literature. It "applies" the framework of Homer's epic Odeon, which is divided into three chapters 18, and echoes it in character design and plot arrangement. However, the author turns the myth that the ancient Greek hero Ulysses was adrift at sea for 10 years into a story of a modern ordinary Bloom wandering in the streets of Dublin one day, thus implying the end of the heroic era and the tragedy of the fate of contemporary ordinary people. Ulysses is very different from traditional realistic novels. It shows the serious spiritual crisis of modern westerners by using the means of stream of consciousness in all directions and through the subconscious flow of characters. Therefore, this novel is regarded as an encyclopedia of stream of consciousness by western critics. The works are full of stories in traditional novels, but mainly focus on the life and inner activities of Bloom and Stephen in Dublin from 8: 00 a.m. to 2: 00 a.m. on June 8, 104, showing their past experiences and spiritual life in the disorderly flow of consciousness. Bloom's wife, Molly, mostly shows it in the eyes of others in the novels, and it doesn't appear positively until the end of the article. The author ends the whole work with a long monologue of her heart lying in bed, half asleep and half awake. Their experiences can not form a complete and orderly plot clue, and the occurrence of events is not connected with the development of time in series, but it has become an external source of the flow of characters' consciousness, bringing out an endless stream of characters' understanding. This kind of consciousness activity is completely different from the logical, organized and rational psychological description in traditional novels, but the display of the original state of human consciousness, which is not limited by time and space and logic.
There are only three core figures in the work, who show multi-level complex and contradictory personalities. Leo Polder, an advertising contractor for a newspaper? Bloom is mediocre and humble, but there is no lack of loyalty and kindness; His wife Molly, a minor celebrity, is addicted to lewdness, but she also longs for truth; Stephen, a history teacher in a private middle school? Daedalus was empty, but refused to give up his fantasy. Through them, Joyce vividly depicts the real images of people in modern western cities. They no longer shine with the glory of ancient heroes and their spirit is no longer lofty, but they still stick to the spiritual home of human nature. The author showed people a panoramic view of modern people's souls. Compared with other stream-of-consciousness writers, Joyce adopted a "staggered" stream-of-consciousness writing style in Ulysses, that is, what everyone thinks has nothing to do with others, although it sometimes overlaps, but it is accidental because the characters don't have to face the same thing. This narrative method makes the content of the novel more dispersed, and the extensive use of "inner monologues" in the works makes "free association" jump and random, which brings difficulties to readers' reading and understanding.
William faulkner (1897~ 1962)
American writer William? Faulkner is another outstanding representative of stream-of-consciousness literature. Faulkner was born into a noble manor family in the southern United States and northern Mississippi. Sherwood 1926? Under the guidance and help of Anderson, he published his first novel, The Reward of Soldiers. 1929, his transitional work "Sartor Reese" came into being, which opened the novel "York Napatafa lineage" that the author struggled for all his life. Faulkner chose the fictional town of York Patafa as the object of description, and used their stories to form a novel, which showed the ups and downs of southern American society and the ups and downs of people from all walks of life for a century and a half. Yoknapata's French novels include 15 novels and a large number of short stories, among which important works such as As I Lay Dying (1930) are narrated from multiple angles and a lot of stream-of-consciousness techniques (Michael? Milgate); Light in August (1932) focuses on a lonely man who can't find his place in society among three clues of equal development. The story of Krismer's struggle and destruction; Absalom! Absalom! "(1936) through the narrative and analysis of several people to show the manor owner Thomas? The rise and fall of Saiden. This work is epic in structure and has a strong tragic atmosphere. Faulkner's most representative work is the novel The Sound and the Fury (1929).
The Sound and the Fury is set in Jefferson Town. It describes and shows the life and spiritual world of the descendants of the Compson family, a once prominent family, which has now gone into decline. This book is divided into four parts, with the title of the four-day life of the Compson family. Each part tells the same story from the stream of consciousness of Bangui, his brothers Quentin and Jason and the author's own narrative angle. The center of the story is the fate of Compson's daughter Katie. Compson and his wife, descendants of the southern aristocratic family, are depressed, have an empty life and have no warmth and love for their children. Daughter Katie is enthusiastic and difficult to integrate into the family. When I grew up, I accidentally gave my virginity to a dude, which led to a tragic marriage, being abandoned and becoming a prostitute. Katie's younger brother Benji was born an idiot and attached to her sister maggot. Katie's brother Quentin has incestuous feelings for his sister. The loss of virginity and Chitty's abandonment both dealt a great mental blow to them: Bangui lost its only spiritual pillar, and Quentin's traditional values in the south, which he had established since childhood, suffered a devastating blow and finally chose the road of suicide. Among the brothers and sisters, only Jason is in tune with the times, selfish, despicable, jealous of his sister, and looking for opportunities to blackmail her fallen sister and her illegitimate daughter. In this environment, only Dilcey, a black maid, has a clear head and can judge right and wrong rationally; The author examines all the characters from her standpoint, and through her, she also reflects the humiliation and kindness of the workers.
Faulkner used the expression of "composite stream of consciousness" to tell the whole story through the stream of consciousness of people with different personalities, experiences and qualities in different periods, and produced the composite stream of consciousness. Although there is some repetition, there is no sense of similarity, because the focus of the author's description is not the story of Katie's mother and daughter falling from the building, but the influence of the incident on different people's hearts and their inner changes. Stories become an integral part of the consciousness process of the three characters, introducing readers into the inner world of various characters. The novel is not narrated in chronological order, so readers need to participate in the creation and assemble the whole process of events, which shows that the stories that happened in the chaotic chronological order have internal order. The narrative angle of the work is from the inside out, and the constant change of the narrator's mind and thought becomes the main line of the extension of the content of the work. The changing ideas in this paper need not be explained by clear words, but by changing fonts, tones, titles and other means, which need readers to distinguish carefully.
Joyce Carol Oates (1938~)
Joyce? Carol. Oates, a famous contemporary American woman writer, is another representative of American stream-of-consciousness novels. Oates was born in Lockport, a suburb of Buffalo in upstate New York. After graduating from high school, she got a bonus, entered Syracuse University to study literature, and then entered the University of Wisconsin to study for a master's degree. After graduating from college, she taught in universities such as Canada and the United States.
Oates' literary creation can be roughly divided into two stages. Novels published in the 1960s, such as Childhood, Trembling Autumn (1964) and Paradise on Earth (1967), are mainly realistic. Since 1970s, Oates has gradually attached importance to psychological description and the excavation of the subconscious. Some people say that she was later a writer of "psychological realism", but most of them classify her as a stream-of-consciousness novel. Since 1970s, her works mainly include the novels At Your mercy (1973), The Assassin (1975) and Childwood (1976). Collection of short stories: reincarnation of love (1970), marriage and shame (1972), goddess and other women (1974), hungry ghost (1974), seduction and other stories (1974) Since then, she has been further influenced by Joyce, Faulkner and Freud to explore new ways of novel creation. In "Goddess and Other Women" published by her 1974, there is a short story entitled "About Bobby? T case is her masterpiece in this respect. The novel describes the story of a black youth aged 19 who defends himself after being provoked for no reason and is arrested and imprisoned. The young man spent 19 years in his cell. When he got out of prison. Has become a timid little old man. The author believes that the cause of this tragedy is the "collective unconsciousness" in American society, that is, some subconscious thoughts of individuals are determined by factors such as race, nationality, family, times and history. Deep-rooted racial discrimination is deeply buried in people's subconscious and dominates people's actions. Frances and others, the little girl who directly caused the tragedy of black youth, did not mean to provoke, but were dominated by the idea of racial discrimination that infiltrated into the unconscious, and unconsciously brought lifelong sorrow to black youth. This novel obviously imitates Joyce's and Faulkner's stream-of-consciousness techniques. In the view of time and space, he also accepted the influence of Bergson's theory, but did not copy it and made some innovations.
The masterpiece of stream-of-consciousness novels 1. Memories of the past (Proust)
It is recognized as a masterpiece of stream-of-consciousness novels. Excerpts are as follows:
We give the unknowable a name, so the name provides us with an image of the unknowable, and at the same time points out an entity, forcing us to unify the name and the entity. Even we can find a soul that cannot be accommodated by the city for a city, but we no longer have the right to deprive it of its name. In such an era, names not only make cities and rivers as individual as allegorical paintings, but also make the material world colorful, which makes human society present a bizarre picture: every castle, mansion and palace has its mistress or fairy, just like there is a forest god and a water god in the forest. Sometimes, the fairy is deeply hidden behind her name, nourished by our imagination and changes with our imagination. Therefore, although for many years, Mrs. de Gailmount was only an image on a slide or stained glass window to me, when a completely different dream was wetted by the foam splashed by the rapids, it began to lose its luster.
2. Spots on the wall (Adeline Virginia Woolf)
The full text tells that the protagonist saw a small black dot on her wall at home, which triggered all the ideas she could think of about the small black dot. These thoughts are very chaotic, without the storyline, climax and so on of traditional novels. Just some thoughts and consciousness of the protagonist. It turns out that the black spot is actually a snail.
3 "Contour preheating" (many)
As the first stream-of-consciousness novel in China's literary history, The Contour Warns Up has broken the inherent "linear time" narrative of China's traditional novels, and attracted enthusiastic attention in reading columns in Taiwan Province, Japan and even Singapore. The 700,000-word book covers human feelings, astronomy, religion and psychology, and its breadth is amazing. Warming Up the Contour and A Dream of Red Mansions are among the 50 best books in China. It not only has the untranslatable beauty of Chinese, but also refines the plot beauty of the unique structure of foreign avant-garde literature, focusing on lyricism without affecting the writing style, just like countless palm prints secretly follow the sequential direction. This novel, written by a boy of 18 years old, shocked the literary world once it was published. Its ghostly and incomplete gorgeous style exudes subtle and sweet breath, which makes China's novel circles marvel at it.