The Autobiographical Novel of Co-Consciousness: Goncharov, Woolf and Joyce

Abstract

In a comparative study, Galya Diment draws a novel comparison between two giants of Modernism and a relatively obscure 19th-century Russian Realist, claiming that three writers all re-invented idea of duality in literature. Focusing on Woolf's To Lighthouse, Joyce's Ulysses and Goncharov's Common Story, she introduces and redefines idea of as mechanism that allows each work to transcend genre of autobiographical bildungsroman and classical tradition of duality, represented by doppelganger. Defining co-consciousness as means by which writers fictionalise what appear to be equally conscious sides of their personalities, she argues that this concept is telling distinction between these three divided-they-stand writers and divided-they-fall approach of other celebrated masters of double. A crucial feature of three writers is their tendency to tolerate split personality as an inevitable yet not life-threatening condition. Diment presents strong evidence that fictional split self often functions not only as an expression of a writer's inner conflicts but also as a powerful and conscious artistic tool. For Woolf, Joyce and Goncharov, she writes, fictional alter ego appears to act as a critical buffer between writers themselves and their autobiographical material. The author discusses at some length extent to which concept of simultaneous consciousness is psychologically valid, and she pays considerable attention to dual nature of periods that formed each writer's sensibilities. She ends main part of book with Ulysses, she says, because she believes that in this novel the co-conscious split autobiographical self has found its perfect home.