Concetti Chiave
- William James introduced "stream of consciousness" to describe the continuous flow of thoughts, influencing 20th-century literature focused on inner processes.
- Interior monologue verbally expresses a character's mental activity, differing from stream of consciousness, which represents the psychic phenomenon itself.
- Characteristics of interior monologue include immediacy, absence of introductory phrases, dual narration levels, non-chronological order, and lack of punctuation.
- Indirect interior monologue involves author presence and a fixed character space with a freely moving consciousness, highlighting subjective time.
- Extreme interior monologue, used by James Joyce in "Finnegans Wake," occurs within a dreamlike, unconscious mind featuring wordplay and free associations.
The Interior monologue:
Origin of stream of consciousness
William James coined the phrase “stream of consciousness” to define the continuous flow of thoughts that characterized the human mind. This definition was adopted by literary critics to define a kind of 20th-century literature which focused on this inner process.
At beginning of the 20th century writers gave more importance to subjective consciousness and understood it was impossible to reproduce the complexity of the human being using the traditional techniques and the utilized a new means of expression. They adopted the interior monologue to represent in a novel the unspoken activity of the mind. Interior monologue is often confused with the stream of consciousness but they are different: in fact the “interior monologue” is the verbal expression of a physical phenomenon while in the stream of consciousness is the psychic phenomenon itself.
Characteristics of interior monologue
The main features of interior monologue are:
-Its being a verbal expression of a physical phenomenon;
-Its immediacy
-Its being free from introductory expressions like “ he thought…ex”
-The presence of two different level of narration: one external of the character’s mind and the other internal.
-The lack of a chronological order and the lack of formal logical order and presence of subjective time
-The absence of punctuation
Types of interior monologue
There are 4 main different kinds of interior monologue:
1.The indirect interior monologue:
Is characterized by:
-The author is present in the narration: character’s thoughts can be presented directly or by descriptions and comments or introductory phrases to guide the reader through the narrations;
-The character stays fixed in space while his consciousness moves freely in the time: in character’s mind everything happens in the present and this concept of “inner time” shows the relativism of a subjective experience.
2.Interior monologue with two levels of narration:
The interior monologue could have two different levels of narration (use of 3rd person narration), one external (second level of narration)to character’s mind and the other internal. It’s the chase of James Joyce’s Ulysses.
3.Interior monologue with the mind level of narration:
In this kind of interior monologue character’s thoughts flow freely, not interrupted by external events. We can find this kind of interior monologue in the final chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses where Molly when she is the bed, think about everything without a logical order of events and mixed present ,past and future events.
-flash back
-dimensione atemporale / timeless dimension
-free flowing style
4.Extreme interior monologue:
This technique was adopted by James Joyce in “Finnegans Wake”. The narration take place in the mind of the main character while he is dreaming.,a sort of unconscious level where the writer use different word and free associations mixed to crate new expression
Domande da interrogazione
- What is the origin of the term "stream of consciousness" and how is it related to literature?
- What are the main characteristics of an interior monologue?
The term "stream of consciousness" was coined by William James to describe the continuous flow of thoughts in the human mind. Literary critics later adopted this term to define a type of 20th-century literature that focused on depicting this inner process.
The main characteristics include its immediacy, lack of introductory expressions, presence of two levels of narration (external and internal), absence of chronological and formal logical order, and lack of punctuation.
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