Stream Of Consciousness Technique Research Articles

Paradigms of flexible configurations: I-generation and Beijing-punks in Wang Meng, Xu Xing, and Chun Shu

This article examines the contested drama of the epic quest of self-identity through a critical rereading of three works by Beijing writers from three different generations, describing Beijing life during three different time periods: Wang Meng’s “Kite Streamers” (1979), Xu Xing’s “Variations Without a Theme” (1985), and Chun Shu’s Beijing Doll (2001). Wang Meng’s protagonists occupy a limited space between their individual dreams and the tarnished collective ideals in the late 1970s. The groundbreaking stream of consciousness technique that Wang Meng ushered in illustrates a rupture between the repressive ideology of the past and an unconscious world of personal desires. Xu Xing’s protagonist is forever wandering Beijing’s streets, positioning himself on the margins of social space. His unfixed identity creates a detached, even schizophrenic, perspective while at the same time it empowers a subjectively critical engagement in the 1980s. Chun Shu (the name of both the writer and the protagonist), an icon of the so-called New New Human Being movement in 21st-century Beijing, who longs for a luxurious living space and celebrates the electronic euphoria, as this article argues, is nothing more than a cybernetic punk of post-modern consumerism and post-socialist nihilism.

SOME PROBLEMS OF TERMINOLOGY IN THE ANALYSIS OF THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS NOVEL

IN the literature that has grown up round the technique of the novels of Dorothy Richardson, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and other authors to whose work the term 'stream of consciousness' is usually applied, there is a remarkable lack of uniformity in terminology. Scholars frequently use different terms to describe the same device, or, worse still, use the same term to describe different devices. In the four major American studies of the last ten years, a number of disparities emerge. L. E. Bowling! talks of 'the stream of consciousness technique' and sees as its two main devices 'interior monologue' and 'internal analysis'. Robert Humphrey2 rejects 'the stream of consciousness technique' but admits 'the stream of consciousness novel' and sees as its two main devices 'direct interior monologue' and 'indirect interior monologue', to which he adds the additional devices of 'omniscient description' and 'soliloquy'. M. J. Friedman3 simply takes over the terminology of Bowling and Humphrey but claims that 'internal analysis' (Bowling) is different from 'indirect interior monologue' (Humphrey).4 As Friedman gives no examples to illustrate his terms, the difference remains obscure. Leon EdeI.5 who seldom comes to grips with basic problems of technique, uses the term 'internal monologue', equates it with 'stream of consciousness' and applies it on p. 84 to a monologue in the first person and on p. 10'8 to monologues in the third person. In German the confusion is at least as great as in English. A recent study by K. R. Meyer bears the' title Zur erlebten Rede (The Interior Monologue) im englischen Roman des 20. Jahrhunderts,6 thus clearly equating 'erlebte Rede' and 'interior monologue'. It is then rather puzzling to find in the body of the work a statement to the effect that it is absolutely necessary to distinguish between 'Bewusstseinsstrom' or 'innerer Monolog' on the one hand and 'erlebte Rede' on the other.7 So eminent a scholar as Gerhard StorzS equates 'erlebte Rede' and 'Ie monologue interieur', while the equally eminent Wolfgang Kayser9 points out that the stream of consciousness may be represented by either 'innerer Monolog' or 'erlebte Rede'.

The Sound and the Fury: A Study in Perspective

The sound and the Fury was the first of Faulkner's novels to make the question of form and technique an unavoidable critical issue. In any discussion of its structure the controlling assumption should be that there are plausible reasons for the particular arrangement of the four sections and for the use of the stream of consciousness technique in the first three and not in the fourth. Jean-Paul Sartre's comment that the moment the reader attempts to isolate the plot content “he notices that he is telling another story” indicates the need for such an assumption, not only for any light that may be thrown on The Sound and the Fury but for any insight that may emerge concerning Faulkner's method and achievement.

What is the Stream of Consciousness Technique?

Despite the fact that the stream of consciousness technique occupies an important position in twentieth-century fiction, there is no general agreement as to where the method originated or what it really is. As Frederick J. Hoffman observes, “Writers and critics are both confused by the idea of ‘interior monologue,’ or the ‘stream of consciousness,’ as it is more familiarly known.”1 Elizabeth Drew says that the stream of consciousness technique was “invented by Dorothy Richardson.”2 Katharine F. Gerould remarks that Henry James “introduced the method into English fiction.”3 In an editorial note appended to the English edition of Edouard Dujardin's Les Lauriers sont coupés, James Laughlin holds that Dujardin invented interior monologue.4 In making this statement, he is following the position taken by Dujardin in Le Monologue intérieur, in which he attempts to describe and define the method first used by him, he says, in Les Lauriers.