Modern English Novel: From Bourgeois Themes to Stream of Consciousness, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica Modern English Novel: From Bourgeois Themes to Stream of Consciousness e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! THE MODERN NOVEL ®. THE ORIGINS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL The English novel is bourgeois in its origin. Its favourite theme is gain or loss of a social status. The novelist is a mediator between his characters and reader. Events and incidents are related in a more or less objective way in chronological order. ® THE SHIFT FROMTHE VICTORIAN TO THE MODERN NOVEL Caused by: A gradual but substantial transformation of British society The pressing need for different forms of expression This two caused they forced novelists into a position of moral and psychological uncertainty. The novelist became a mediator between the solid and unquestioned values of the past and the confused present. This new realism shifted from society to man is a limited creature whose moral progress was inferior to the advances in technology. ® THE BIRTH OF THE MODERN NOVEL The new concept of time and the new theory of the unconscious contributed to the birth of the model novel. At the beginning of the 20" century the modern novelist: Rejected omniscient narration Experimented with new methods to portray the individual consciousness Gave more and more importance to subjective consciousness Understood it was impossible to reproduce the complexity of the human mind using traditional techniques ® THE PSYCHOLOGICAL NOVELISTS They were interested in the development of the character's mind and human relationships. The most important are: Joseph Conrad, David Hebert Lawrence, Edward Morgan Forster ® THE WENCONCEPT OF TIME Time was perceived as subjective and inner. The distinction between past and present was meaningless in psychological terms. Absence of a well-structured plot with a chronological sequence of events. It was not the passing of time that revealed the truth about characters. ® THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS It was the American psychologist William James who coined the term ‘stream of consciousness’ in Principles of Psychology (1890), the continuous flow of thoughts and sensations that characterize the human mind. ® THE INTERIOR MONOLOGUE TECHNIQUE NARRATIVE Writers, like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, adopted the interior monologue, to represent the unspoken activity of the mind. Interior monologue is the verbal expression of a psychic phenomenon Stream of consciousness is the psychic phenomenon itself