STREAM OF CONSCIUSNESS

MODERNISM AND THE NOVEL

Modernist novel broke with most of the conventions which had typified Victorian fiction, in
particular in two aspects:

1) The omniscent narrator is replaced by the presentation of CHARACTERS’

THOUGHTS, FEELING AND MEMORIES.

2) No linear and chronological plot, but the ANALYSIS OF MOMENTS OF BEING.

 VIRGINIA WOOLF:

«EVERY MOMENT IS THE CENTRE AND MEETING PLACE

OF AN EXTRAORDINARY NUMBER OF PERCEPTIONS
WHICH HAVE NOT YET BEEN EXPRESSED»
 FREUD
Freud’s The interpretation of Dreams proposed a theory of
human consciousness as multi-layered, involving different levels
of experience and memory. The most significant level was the
UNCONSCIOUS, which could not be accessed except through
dreams.

Freud argued that much of man’s conscious

behaviour was governed by IRRATIONAL
UNCONSCIOUS DRIVES

Freud’s theories suggested that man organised the

information he received from the outside world according
to his own experience, desires and impulses, and that his
perception of reality was thus fundamentally
SUBJECTIVE.
 Another thinker who influenced the techniques of Modernists
was:

Henry Bergson
Bergson and la durée:

- He argued that time could not be measured according to units (such as hours, minutes etc.) because it is a
FLOW, a «DURATION» and not a series of points. We do not experience the world moment by moment
but in a continuous way.

• - Crucial to this idea of duration was MEMORY, because he said: «our consciousness of the present is
already memory», that is to say, as soon as we know we have experienced something, it has already passed.
But the persistence of the past in the present shows that in a vital sense the moment is never over.
In some ways linked to Bergson’s notion of time is the
psychologist

WILLIAM JAMES  He talked about the stream of consciousness. He

said that CONSCIOUSNESS «does not appear to
itself chopped up in bits» but is something that
FLOWS.

 By consciousness, he does not merely intend

conscious awareness but the entire range of an
individual’s mental activity including pre-speech
levels of consciousness and awareness.
 NEW TECHNIQUES OF WRITING
The theories of Freud, Bergson and James along with the technologies of mass culture inevitably led to
the development of NEW TECHNIQUES OF WRITING.
James Joyce and Virginia Woolf are the two greatest practitioners of stream of consciousness fiction and
their novels make use of many techniques, but the most important are:

Direct interior Indirect interior

monologue monologue
• DIRECT INTERIOR MONOLOGUE: refers to the direct
presentation of a character’s stream of consciousness without the
guiding presence of an author or narrator. The most famous example
is Molly Bloom’s monologue in Joyce’s Ulysses where we can enter
directly into Molly’s thoughts without any external point of view

• INDIRECT INTERIOR MONOLOGUE: refers to the

indirect presentation of a character’s thoughts filtered through
the voice of an anonymous third person narrator. This type of
monologue is generally easier to read as it often includes
more descriptive passages or explanation. An example can be
found in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway.
THE END