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STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Stream of consciousness fiction is a type of fiction in which the basic emphasis is placedon exploration of the prespeech levels of consciousness for the purpose, primarily, of revealing the spychic being It is concerned with the whatness and the howness of spiritual

and mental experiences (memories, sensations, feelings, conceptions, fancies, imaginations,as well as intuitions, visions, insights and even the occult).

Novels up to now were concerned with the motive and action of the characters. Stream of Consciousness novels were concerned with the psychic existence and functioning.

TECHNIQUES

Basic:

1. Direct interior monologue (partly or entirely unuttered. Hidden narrator. Noaudience)

2. Indirect interior monologue (partly or entirely unuttered. No audience. Narrator is present continuously)

3. Omniscient description (Entirely descriptive. 3rd person. The writer is concernedwith what comes out of the mind rather than what the character says).

4. Soliloquy (formal or immediate audience is present. The sentence structure varies)

Special:

5. Drama (theatrical scene)6. Verse form (less effective because psyche is unordered).

Methods:

1. Free association: the pshyche, which is almost continuously active, cannot beconcentrated for very long. Free association is the chief technique in controlling themovement of stream of consciousness.

2. Time and Space Montage (cinematic device): The subject can remain fixed in space andhis consciousness can move in time, or time can remain fixed and the spatial element canchange. These techniques are used to create multiplicity (They are: multiple view, slow ups,fade outs, cutting, close ups, panorama, flash backs).

3. Mechanical Devices = Punctuation. E.g. In the Sound and the Fury, direct interior monologue is indicated at its beginning by italics. Woolf uses parentheses and Waldo Frank uses ellipsis marks. Joyce relies less on mechanical devices.

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DEVICES

1. Suspension of coherence: suspending sense impressions and ideas in the memoryfor so long that they reappear at unexpected and seemingly unreasonable places.This devices is used for the purpose of privacy.

2. Discontinuity: Achieved by the use of rhetorical devices (personification,hyperbaton, repetition, metaphor, litotes, anaphora, anacoluthon, epanodos,dislocated parentheses).

3. Transformation by metaphor: the use of images and symbols to express what is beyond the power of denotative meaning. Impressionist use of imagery is thedescription of an immediate perception in figurative terms which expand to expressan emotional attitude toward a more complex thing.

THE FORMS

The problem of form for the Stream of Consciousness novelist is the problem of howorder is imposed on disorder.

Patterns:

1. The unities (time, place, character, action)2. Leitmotifs3. Previously established literary patterns (burlesques)4. symbolic structures5. Formal scenic arrangements6. Natural cyclical schemes7. Theoretical cyclical schemes.