GK+Source+1+-+HUMPHREY

 ** Main points, Important Quotes and Key Terms **

(Chapter 1 - "The Functions" of the book Stream of consciousness in the modern novel by Robert Humphrey)


 * - Dorothy Richardson, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner are important novelists and representative stream-of-consciousness writers **


 * - These writers “have created a fiction centered on the core of human experience, which if it has not been the usual domain of fiction, is not, they have proved, an improper one.” – page 22 **


 * - “They have, through their contributions, proved that the human mind, especially the artist’s, is too complex and wayward ever to be channeled into conventional patterns.” – page 22 **


 * - “(…) __the term stream of consciousness__ is reserved for indicating an approach to the presentation of //psychological// aspects of character in fiction (…)” – page 1 **


 * - Novels that use the stream of consciousness technique “have as their essential subject matter the consciousness of one or more characters” (…) – page 2 **


 * - Assuming that there are levels of consciousness, we can make distinction between the “speech level” and the “prespeech level”. In psychological fiction, we are concerned with the prespeech level, “which involves no communicative basis as does the speech level (whether spoken or written).” – page 3 **


 * - “The prespeech levels of consciousness are not censored, rationally controlled, or logically ordered.” – page 3 **


 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">- __The iceberg metaphor__: if we think the consciousness as the whole iceberg, we can think that the stream-of-consciousness fiction “is greatly concerned with what lies below the surface.” – <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">page 4 **


 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">- __Stream-of-consciousness fiction__: “a type of fiction in which the basic emphasis is placed on exploration of the prespeech levels of consciousness for the purpose, primarily, of revealing the psychic being of the characters.” – <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">page 4 **


 * <span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">- There are different ways that writers can present the __Stream of consciousness technique__: **


 * <span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">a) The Self-conscious mind: **
 * **<span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;"> Examples of novels: Ulysses, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Sound and the Fury **
 * **<span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;"> inner awareness **
 * ** <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">“The attempt to create human consciousness in fiction is a modern attempt to analyze human nature.” – <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">page 6 **
 * **<span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;"> According to Henry James, “consciousness is //where// we are aware of human experience.” **
 * ** <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">Through the use of stream of consciousness technique novelists can “enlarge fictional art” by describing the inner states of their characters. – <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">page 7 **
 * **<span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;"> Characters are presented in a more accurate and realistic way. **
 * **<span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;"> “(…) the stream of consciousness novelists were, like the naturalists, trying to depict life accurately; but unlike the naturalists, the life they were concerned with was the individual’s psychic life.” **


 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">b) <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">Impressions and Visions **
 * **<span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;"> A question to be answered: “For what purpose does a writer use stream of consciousness?” **
 * **<span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;"> Virginia Woolf: for her, the process of inner realization of the truth could only be find “on the level of the mind that is not expressed” **
 * **<span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;"> Take a look at these novels: Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse **


 * <span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">c) Satires and Ironies **
 * **<span style="color: #800080; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;"> James Joyce: he presents life as it actually is and that makes “the reader feel he is in direct contact with the life presented in the book” **
 * ** <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">“Stream of consciousness is not a technique for its own sake. It is based on a realization of the force of the drama that takes place in the minds of human beings.” – <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">page 21 **