Stream of consciousness
In literary criticism, stream of consciousness denotes a literary technique which eks to describe an individual's point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character's thought process. Stream-of-consciousness writing is strongly associated with the modernist movement. Its introduction in the literary context, transferred from psychology, is attributed to May Sinclair.
Stream-of-consciousness writing is usually regarded as a special form of interior monologue and is characterized by associative (and at times dissociative) leaps in syntax and punctuation that can make the pro difficult to follow, tracing as they do a character's fragmentary thoughts and nsory feelings. Stream of consciousness and interior monologue must be clearly distinguished from dramatic monologue, where the speaker is addressing an audience or a third鲜肉蒸饺
person, and is ud chiefly in poetry or drama. In stream of consciousness, the speaker's thought process are more often depicted as overheard (or addresd to onelf) and is primarily a fictional device.
The earliest precedent of any literary work using this technique is possibly Ovid's Metamorphos in ancient Rome. With its rapid, unconnected association of objects, geometrical shapes and numerology, Sir Thomas Browne's discour The Garden of Cyrus (1658) may, upon examination of its text, be considered one of the very earliest examples of stream-of-consciousness writing. Another would be The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne, (1760). Further examples of the development of this style are The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe (1837/1838) and douard Dujardin's Les Lauriers sont coupes (1888). Tolstoy ud something similar to the stream-of-consciousness technique in Anna Karenina (1877) in the portions leading to the climax; another early example is Arthur Schnitzler's 1900 short story Leutnant Gustl. Stream of consciousness writing gained rapid prominence in the twentieth century. Some of the works of Gyula Krudy (The Adventures of 创业带动就业
Sindbad) also employ a technique that can in many respects be considered the fore-runner of stream-of-consciousness. Famous writers to employ this technique in the English language include Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and William Faulkner.
A few of the more famous works to employ the technique are:
Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment
Marcel Proust's In Search of 张居正传
Lost Time
Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage (1915-28)
James Joyce's Ulyss (in particular Molly Bloom's soliloquy)
Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthou and The Waves
William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying
Jack Kerouac's On the Road
J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye
Robert Anton Wilson's & Robert Shea's Illuminatus!
Bob Dylan's song Like A Rolling Stone
Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl
Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren
F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby"
Brian W. Aldiss' 1969 novel Barefoot in the Head employs a stream of consciousness style as a necessary part of the plot. The leading character, a Serbian named Charteris, wanders through a Europe aerosol-bombed with a persistent chemical agent in a war between Europe and an "Arab coalition". Europeans are conquently on a permanent acid trip an羊肉怎么煮
d are only able to think in streams of lateral associations of tangential ideas.
The technique has also been parodied, notably by David Lodge in the final chapter of The British Muum Is Falling Down.
The Stream of Consciousness
The order of our study must be analytic. We are now prepared to begin the introspective
study of the adult consciousness itlf. Most books adopt the so-called synthetic method. Starting with 'simple ideas of nsation,' and regarding the as so many atoms, they proceed to build up the higher states of mind out of their 'association,' 'integration,' or 'fusion,' as hous are built by the agglutination of bricks. This has the didactic advantages which the synthetic method usually has. But it commits one beforehand to the very questionable theory that our higher states of consciousness are compounds of units; and instead of starting with what the reader directly knows, namely his total concrete states of mind, it starts with a t of suppod 'simple ideas' with which he has no immediate acquaintance at all, and concerning who alleged interactions he is much at the mercy of any plausible phra. On every ground, then, the method of advancing from the simple to the compound expos us to illusion. All pedants and abstractionists will naturally hate to abandon it. But a student who loves the fulness [sic] of human nature will prefer to follow the 'analytic' method, and to begin with the most concrete facts, tho with which he has a daily acquaintance in his own inner life. The analytic method will discover in due time the elementary parts, if such exist, without danger of pre
cipitate assumption. The reader will bear in mind that our own chapters on nsation have dealt mainly with the physiological conditions thereof. They were put first as a mere matter of convenience, becau incoming currents come first. Psychologically they might better have come last. Pure nsations were described on page 12 [of James' Psychology] as process which in adult life are well-nigh unknown, and nothing was said which could for a moment lead the rea甜蜜网名
der to suppo that they were the elements of composition of the higher states of mind.
The Fundamental Fact. -- The first and foremost concrete fact which every one will affirm to belong to his inner experience is the fact that consciousness of some sort goes on. 'States of mind' succeed each other in him. If we could say in English 'it thinks,' as we say 'it rains' or 'it blows,' we should be stating the fact most simply and with the minimum of assumption. As we cannot, we must simply say that thought goes胎盘老化是什么原因造成的
on.
Four Characters in Consciousness. -- How does it go on? We notice immediately four important characters in the process, of which it shall be the duty of the prent chapter to treat in a general way :
1) Every 'state' tends to be part of a personal consciousness.
2) Within each personal consciousness states are always changing.
3) Each personal consciousness is nsibly continuous.
