Stream of Consciousness Novel PDF

** The stream-of-consciousness Novel :::::::** The stream-of-consciousness technique is a revolutionary modern technique which has tried to transform the art of narrative almost in every respect. The first user of this technique was the French novelist Edouard Dujardin in a short novel published in...

** The stream-of-consciousness Novel :::::::** The stream-of-consciousness technique is a revolutionary modern technique which has tried to transform the art of narrative almost in every respect. The first user of this technique was the French novelist Edouard Dujardin in a short novel published in 1888. The phrase \"stream of consciousness,\" however, was coined by the psychologist William James who wrote *Principles of Psychology *(1890). By calling consciousness a stream, James meant that human consciousness is something fluid; it is an unbroken current of feelings, impressions, fantasies, half-formed thoughts, and awareness in general. Consciousness is a continuity like time, and it is independent of time. At any given instant of time, an individual\'s consciousness may not be entirely concerned with the present. He may be living through an experience of the past or fantasizing about the future. The clock of subjective consciousness is independent of the mechanical clock-time. The stream-of-consciousness novelist tries to render the consciousness of his characters in its fullness (not excluding even its pre-verbal component) without the least authorial intervention and without ordering it into logical, lucid, and even grammatical narrative. Works like Joyce\'s *Ulysses *are indeed revolutionary in the history of English fiction The first British user of the technique was Dorothy Richardson whose long novel, *Pilgrimage, *comprised twelve volumes, the first of which, *Pointed Roofs,* appeared in 1915. *Pilgrimage *is a semi-autobiographical work which presents the life of the heroine Miriam Henderson and tries to convey her mental process through sense perception mingled with consciousness and half conscious thoughts, memories, feelings and random associations. Dorothy Richardson disliked the term \"stream of consciousness.\" She was not a bold experimenter like Woolf or Joyce. Her pre-Freudian psychology is another limiting factor. James Joyce is the greatest of the stream-of-consciousness novelists. His first novel *A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man *(1916) is quite autobiographical but at the same time objective. It tells us how the hero, Stephen Dedalus, found his vocation as an artist after experimenting with religion and politics. The next novel, *Ulysses *(1922), is a most complex and amazing feat. The protagonist, the middle-aged Irish Jew Leopold Bloom, is made analogous to Homer\'s Odysseus and each of the eighteen episodes in the novel corresponds to one in the Odyssey. This extended analogy complicates and enriches the significance of Joyce\'s novel. Joyce\'s last novel, *Finnegcms Wake, *which took him seventeen years to write (as against seven taken by *Ulysses) *is indeed a hard nut to crack.   Virginia Woolf s novels are poetry novels. She excels in suggesting delicately the subtle nuances of feeling experienced by her female characters. Her sensibility is too refined to admit anything vulgar. Joyce baulks at nothing---not even at sexual indecency. But Woolf is very different. In fact a critic thinks that her major defect is her \"dread of copulation.\" Virginia Woolf's *Mrs. Dalloway *(1925) represents the same concept that is illustrated in *Lieutenant Gustl* with a slight variation of presentation and depth of exploration. In this case, readers follow a variety of characters of different genders and social rankings through the course of one day, not and bear witness to the internal, stream of consciousness projections of many of those various characters rather than just one.   The stream-of-consciousness is a revolutionary technique because of the fact that it is based on a revolutionary concept of reality. It is a common practice to contrast Modernism with Realism, as if the moderns were not concerned with reality. They were in fact as much concerned with reality as any of their predecessors. But their concept of reality was very different, as different as their technique of presenting it. For them reality is not something superficial, mechanical, rational, or purely \"\'scientific,\" but something deeper, mythic, alogical, or even irrational. By simply allowing the free flow of one's consciousness, as is done in stream of consciousness texts, one offers a look into their psyche, and, in a novel, the ability to see that deep within a character's mind presents the possibility of better understanding our role as readers and, ultimately, the writer's motivation and central idea. ** Write an essay on the development of poetic drama in the twentieth century.** **English drama, according to Somerset Maugham took a wrong turn when the 'demand for realism led it to abundant the ornament of verse'. True, the tempo of Ibsenite realism made the naturalistic prose drama the dominant theatrical form in the twentieth century. And yet poetic drama could not be concerned altogether. The revival of poetic drama in the interwar period should, therefore, be considered as an important development in the history of English drama.** **The poetic drama of modern times has certain characteristic which distinguish it from other plays. A poetic drama is essentially romantic in spirit. Its romantic character is manifest in the preponderance of imagination. Besides, the theme of poetic drama is generally idealistic or symbolic. Romantic mysticism is also well evident in the symbolic undertone of the poetic drama. To mention one more point, the poetic drama has a lyrical fervour which can be found in its descriptive as well as reflective passages.** **Some of the important exponents of the poetic drama in the twentieth century are Stephen Philips, John Drinkwater, John Masefield, Christopher Fry, W.B. Yeats and of course Thomas Stearns Eliot. Stephen Philips plays like [Ulysses,] [Nero] end [Faust] realised prolonged theatrical success, though they are of little literary merit. Drinkwater\`s play [The Storm] which has the most meditative language welling up from the depth of heart was enthusiastically received by the audience. W.B. Yeats, again, is one of the major architects of the revival of poetic drama in the twentieth century. Right from [The Countess Cathleen] Yeats shows his genius in fusing drama with poetry. His plays are steeped in Irish mythology and Celtic folk lore.** **T.S. Eliot is one of the main architects of the twentieth century revival of poetic drama. Eliot believed that "no play should be written in verse for which prose is dramatically adequate". Only poetic subjects should be developed into a verse play. However, Eliot\`s verse plays like [Murder in the Cathedral], [Family Reunion], [The Cocktail Party], and [The Confidential Clerk] are by far the most polished modern poetic plays. The preponderance of psychic realities say, the conflict between the spiritual and the temporal in [Murder in the Cathedral] -- suggests the Eliotean idea of what a poetic subject is. The expression of the subject in a musically sonorous language which is no less forceful than prose, immediately captures attention. Eliot\`s credit seems to lie in evolving a rhyme pattern closer to the contemporary spoken language.** **As writers of poetic plays both Christopher Fry and Spender make meta-physical speculation the staple of their verse plays which have a rare verbal exuberance. The highly innovative experiments with poetic drama by such modern playwrights as Synge and Auden has clinched the issue that poetry and dramatic realism are not mutually exclusive.** ** Write a brief essay on the developement of the one-act play in the 20th century.** **As a literary type the one-act play has its development in the twentieth century. The origin of this literary type may be traced in the socio-cultural conditions of the modern society. Immediately after its appearance the one-act play as a literary form became quite popular. And its popularity may be ascribed to various causes, the most important of which is perhaps the mad rush, the sick hurry and hustle of modern life. The realistic 'new drama' that began with Bernard Shaw had the tendency to shorten itself. In place of the conventional five-act play, the playwrights like Shaw and Galsworthy wrote three-act plays. With the further increase the tempo of life, people are left with less leisure hours. So, new experiments are made with the existing came into vogue. The radio broadcasting in limited time also created a favourable atmosphere for the development of the one-act plays.** **It should however be kept in mind that the one-act play is not the reduced form of a five-act or three act play. The two kinds differ radically in spirit, art and technique. The one-act play presents only a slice of life rather than life itself. It usually deals with a single problem or situation to the exclusion of many others. The characters in a one-act play are also few in number. The dialogue is, in general, rigorously economic and effective. The total effect that a one-act play generates on its audience is unified and one. In fact, singleness of aim and singleness of effect are two of the essential features of a successful one-act play.** **The first two decades of the twentieth century initiated a rapid development of the one-act play. Both the English and Irish playwrights produced a considerable variety of fruitful one-act plays. Playwrights like J.M. Synge, W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, Stanley Houghton and L. Abercrombie have proved through their writings what impressive and artistic things are possible within the limited range of one-act plays. Synge was one of the most powerful playwrights of this group. His one-act play [Riders to the Sea]** is a very powerful and profoundly moving tragedy that deals with the lives of the poor fisher-folk of the Aran Islands. The diction and rhythm are highly poetic, and almost all the elements in the play are perfectly attuned to the tragic effect of the play. Though written on some local or regional problems, the appeal of [Riders to the Sea] is universal. Lady Gregory wrote a number of one-act plays taking her themes from the Irish Freedom Movement. [The Rising of the Moon] is one such play and is perhaps the best of Lady Gregory\`s writings. The short plays of Lady Gregory exhibit her great skill in devising her plots and also in presenting the life of the Irish men and women with all its humour. Her plays are fresh, lively and natural on the whole. Another familiar name in the field of the twentieth century one-act plays is Lord Dunsany. He may be considered as one of the best exponents of this jenre of literature by virtue of the romance of which his plays are built and also due to his ability to conjure powerful atmosphere in the play. [A Night at an Inn] is the best known work of Lord Dunsany. In the later part of the twentieth century the one-act play became more and more interesting because of their psychic interest and experimental designs. All these prepared the way for a rapid development and a quick maturity of the one-act play as a literary form. ** SHORT STORY...** The short story is usually concerned with a single effect conveyed in only one or a few significant episodes or scenes. The form encourages economy of setting, concise narrative, and the omission of a complex plot; character is disclosed in action and dramatic encounter but is seldom fully developed. Despite its relatively limited scope, though, a short story is often judged by its ability to provide a "complete" or satisfying treatment of its characters and subject. Before the 19th century the short story was not generally regarded as a distinct literary form. But although in this sense it may seem to be a uniquely modern genre, the fact is that short prose fiction is nearly as old as language itself. Throughout history humankind has enjoyed various types of brief narratives: jests, anecdotes, studied digressions, short allegorical romances, moralizing fairy tales, short myths, and abbreviated historical legends. \[ None of these constitutes a short story as it has been defined since the 19th century, but they do make up a large part of the milieu from which the modern short story emerged.\] As a genre, the short story received relatively little critical attention through the middle of the 20th century, and the most valuable studies of the form were often limited by region or era. In his The Lonely Voice (1963), the Irish short story writer Frank O'Connor attempted to account for the genre by suggesting that stories are a means for "submerged population groups" to address a dominating community. Most other theoretical discussions, however, were predicated in one way or another on Edgar Allan Poe's thesis that stories must have a compact unified effect. By far the majority of criticism on the short story focused on techniques of writing. Many, and often the best of the technical works, advise the young reader---alerting the reader to the variety of devices and tactics employed by the skilled writer. On the other hand, many of these works are no more than treatises on "how to write stories" for the young writer rather than serious critical material. The prevalence in the 19th century of two words, "sketch" and "tale," affords one way of looking at the genre. In the United States alone there were virtually hundreds of books claiming to be collections of sketches (Washington Irving's [The Sketch Book], William Dean Howells's [Suburban Sketches]) or collections of tales (Poe's [Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque,] Herman Melville's [The Piazza Tales]). These two terms establish the polarities of the milieu out of which the modern short story grew. In the nineteenth century, England had far less number of short stories in comparison to their American counterparts. The early English short story writers who made a mark were R.L. Stevenson (1850-1894), Rudyard Kipling (1895-1936) and H.G. Wells (1866-1946). Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and a novel writer. [Treasure Island], [Kidnapped], and [The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyle and Hyde] are significant for Stevenson's method of rendering ambiguous, enigmatic personalities. Rudyard Kipling was an English short story writer, poet and novelist. He wrote tales and poems of British soldiers in India and stories for children like The Jungle Book, Just So Stories, Kim and etc., Kipling's reputation as a children's writer was considered the corner stone of his career. His works described rich, vivid word pictures that honour and, at the same time, parody the language of traditional English stories such as the [Jataka Tales] and [The Thousand and One Arabian Nights]. H.G. Wells was a prolific English writer in many genres. He wrote a number of novels, history, politics, social commentary and textbooks and rules for war games. H.G. Wells is best remembered for his science fiction novels like The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, and The War of the World. His works explored social and scientific topics, from class conflict to evolution. Robert Marler (1974) differentiates between the terms 'tale' and 'short story' in order to signal the change. Moreover, Marler also states that developments in America were driven by a shift in critical attitudes towards fictional moralizing: 'The ability to suggest, to evoke, without resorting to explanations was increasingly praised. Tacked-on moral tags became a sign of mediocrity.' The rise of motion picture changed the status of modern short story rather 'short fiction' as Tim Killick (2008) suggests. The rise of the film obliterated the short story's function of delivering short narratives. The modern short story has responded to film by attempting to render in fiction that which can be brought through the lens of the camera. American short story has had unique development and rise in the 19th century. ** Write a note on war-poetry with special reference to Wilfred Owen.** **The First World War provided a disturbing context which forcibly transformed the often placid, eligiac and unadorned poetry of the Georgian poets into a painfully observant record or a vehicle of protest. By war poetry here we refer to the poems written in the back ground of the First World War. And the poems on the World War-I indicate a class of principles, a strife of realization of a stability in a social order.** **The War-poets who flourished during the period were mostly solider-poets writing on or about war on the basis of their first hand knowledge of war. Hence these poems indicate a change from Georgian romanticism. Of course, romanticism is not quite absent from war-poetry. The poems of Rupert Brooke, for example, are romantically inspired and full of patriotic sentiments. But there are other war-poets who are found to deal with the grim realities of war. They emphasize the meaninglessness of war. War, they find, is nothing but a devastating loss of human lives and properties. There is nothing romantic or grand in war. Wilfred Owen\`s poetry expresses this view and thus registers a powerful protest against war.** **Owen is undoubtedly the most important war-poet of the First World War. He died in the battle field only a week before Armistice was signed and the horror of the long war came to an end. As a poet Owen honestly writes: 'I am not concerned with poetry. My subject is war, and the pity of war. The poetry is in the pity**'. Quite earnestly he lodges a powerful protest against war by exposing the pity, the horror and the futility of war. Owen\`s best known war-poems are "Futility", "Dulce Et Decorum Est", "strange Meeting", "Anthem for Doomed youth", "spring offensive" and the like. There is an expression of anger at the sheer waste of human life in "Futility". "Dulec Et Decorum Est" reverses the old idea -- patriotic sacrifice by portraying the ghast lines of death. "strange Meeting" pictures an escape from battle into '**some profound dull tunnel'**. The poem moves to a meeting of enemies and to a mystic post-mortal reconciliation of two slaughtered soldiers. The poem contains such moving lines as '**I am the enemy you killed, my friend'**. Owen also experimented with the forms and devices of poetry, particularly the sonnet as found in "Anthem for Doomed youth" and "The Next War". He also had a fondness for rhyme and he developed the Para-rhyme in "strange Meeting" and "Futility" to create a situation of remoteness, lack of light and terrible shock. The First World War or Great War was the first military conflict in history that evoked the widest possible spectrum of literary responses, ranging from enthusiastic patriotic affirmation to disillusioned *reductio ad absurdum.* War poems, War novels, and War memoirs frequently describe scenes of misplaced, mad mirth. There was the infernal grin in the faces of soldiers who died in greatest pain, and there was the frequent dementia due to shell-shock and gas-raids. But these appeared as mere related symptoms of a more universal disease, the total loss of order. Isaac Rosenberg, the most visionary of all the trench poets, wrote consciously uncoordinated poems evoking scenes of trench life as \"a demons\' pantomime\" with men \"flung on the shrieking pyre\", with \"grinning faces\" and \"yelling in lurid glee\".