History of English literature from 1900 to 2000

Name: Dhruvita Dhameliya

Roll no : 03

Semester : 2

Year: 2021 to 2023

Subject: History of English literature from 1900 to 2000

Topic : Trends and Movement

E-mail ID:

dhameliyadhruvita24@gmail.com

Submitted to: S. B. Gardi Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Introduction:-

The 20th century opened new visions and possibilities that expanded everyday human experience and greatly influenced the world of art and original painting.From the earliest years of the turn of the century, artists were beginning to experiment with subject matter, creating realities reflective more of their own inner visions than what lay before them in nature. Concurrent with this was a search for new techniques, materials, and approaches to support these forays into new terrains. As a result, 20th century painting movements and trends inspired artists to set out in many divergent directions, resulting in a broad range of styles and forms. Here are some of the major movements that defined and shaped art in the 20th century and which still influence the art being produced today.

Cubism

Dadaism

Expressionism

Imaginism

Surrealism

Symbolism

Avant-garde movement

Futurism

Absurdism

Stream of consciousness

Comedy of menace

So in this I would like to discuss three major movements of the 20th century.

1)Stream of Consciousness:-

In literature, stream of consciousness is a method of narration that describes happenings in the flow of thoughts in the minds of the characters.

The term was initially coined by psychologist William James in his research, The Principles of Psychology. William James, a psychologist in the second half of the nineteenth century, used his philosophy background to coin the phrase "stream of consciousness."

James, often called the Father of American Psychology, said this quickly moving stream of observations and emotions represents the full range of conscious thought. He writes: 

"It is nothing joined, it flows. A ‘river’ or a ‘stream’ is the metaphor by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let’s call it the stream of thought, consciousness, or subjective life.”

Another appropriate term for this device is “interior monologue,” where the individual thought processes of a character, associated with his or her actions, are portrayed in the form of a monologue that addresses the character itself. Therefore, it is different from the “dramatic monologue” or “soliloquy,” where the speaker addresses the audience or the third person. 

The stream of consciousness style of writing is marked by the sudden rise of thoughts and lack of punctuation. The use of this narration style is generally associated with the modern novelist and short story writers of the 20th century.The stream of consciousness technique uses unusual, often grammatically incorrect, sentence structure full of incomplete thoughts and tangents to illustrate how a character thinks.

Why Do Writers Use Stream of Consciousness in Literature?

For centuries, the art of storytelling focused on the events of a story. Stories were expected to be linear. The characters’ thoughts and emotions were often not the driving force of a story. When they were, these thoughts and emotions were written like the rest of the narrative: linearly, with proper grammar conventions.

Stream of consciousness writing, on the other hand, takes you on a journey through a character’s mind. It allows for a grittiness that you can’t achieve with an ordered internal monologue. While stream of consciousness might read somewhat more surrealist than traditional storytelling, it’s the most realistic representation of human thought.

What is the History of Stream of Consciousness Writing?

The late 1800s and early 1900s were a period of major transition throughout much of the world. With economic and social reforms and revolutions occurring from the Americas to Russia, as well as leaps in the sciences, the arts began to transition as well. There was a desire to put an element of humanity into the arts that had been previously overlooked.

In the late 1800s, writers such as Edgar Allen Poe, Leo Tolstoy, and Anton Chekhov began to play with different styles of narration. These authors were predecessors of the Modernist movement.

The Modernism movement was about intentionally breaking writing rules and expectations. Many Modernists, like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, adopted the idea of stream of consciousness from psychology and applied it to their poetry and literature. The term was first used in 1918 to describe Dorothy Richardson’s novel series "pilgrimage".

How Does Stream of Consciousness Differ from Other Narrative Styles?

Stream of consciousness embraces the chaotic nature of human thought. But because it’s harder to read and even harder to write, most stories do not use it.

In traditional style of writing there is proper structure of the writings and Narrative, for example starting, climax and end or past, present or future. Traditional narrative structure goes relatively in order, although flashbacks and flash forwards can be peppered throughout as their own rhetorical devices. The key to a traditional structure is that each scene occurs linearly and orderly. In a traditional narrative, attention is drawn directly to a character’s thoughts or emotions rather than letting the reader experience those thoughts themselves. These stories don’t have extraneous information that is not crucial to the plot. Emotions are described through sensory detail and character behavior. For example "Orlando - A biography by Virginia Woolf in which the character of Orlando whose gender changed but we came to know about this through the behaviour of Orlando and the way he dressed up.

Stream of Consciousness Writing Examples:-

James Joyce :- Ulysses

In this excerpt, Leopold Bloom’s thoughts transition to his younger self:

He is young Leopold, as in a retrospective arrangement, a mirror within a mirror (hey, presto!), he beholdeth himself. That young figure of then is seen, precious manly, walking on a nipping morning from the old house in Clanbrassil to the high school, his book satchel on him bandolier wise, and in it a goodly hunk of wheaten loaf, a mother’s thought.

Joyce accomplishes this transition by creating a continuous narrative flow of Bloom’s thoughts to his past experiences, bringing the reader along for his mental journey back in time.

2)Surrealism:-

Surrealism is a type of literature in which the author attempts to display irrational or dreamlike qualities in his or her writing.

Surrealism in literature can be defined as an artistic attempt to bridge together reality and the imagination. Surrealists seek to overcome the contradictions of the conscious and unconscious minds by creating unreal or bizarre stories full of juxtapositions.

Founded by Andre Breton (1896-1966), surrealism began as an artistic movement in Paris in the 1920s and lasted until the 1940s. Writer and philosopher Breton propelled this movement with his publication of The Manifesto of Surrealism, as a way of fighting against the way art was understood at the time.

With the horrors of World War I still in Europe's wake, art had become controlled by politics. It came to be used as a way of maintaining order and keeping the revolution at bay. However, surrealists wanted to break free from the constraints being posed on art and to do so in an extreme, yet positive way.

Though they fought against political control, the movement's goal was not political in nature. Surrealism sought to free people spiritually and psychologically. These artists and writers wanted to repair the damage done by WWI. Unfortunately, World War II was on the brink, and such a movement made the surrealists a target. During the rise of Nazism and Fascism, many surrealists were forced to seek haven in America. Fortunately, for American culture, their ideas began affecting changes in the States as well.

While the movement itself may have ended, surrealism still exists in much of today's literature. Using surrealist imagery, ideas, or poetic techniques, writers attempt to stretch the boundaries, free the mind, and make readers think.

Characteristics of Surrealism:-

Strange and Shocking:-

Surrealism is meant to be strange and shocking. It is meant to push the envelope in a way that forces people out of their comfortable ideas, so much so that it has even been known to cause riots. While the idea of surrealism is complex, surrealist literature does have common characteristics. Works of surrealism explore parts of the imagination that extend beyond our known reality. These works may come across as dreamlike or irrational due to their bending the rules or our perception of reality.

Dream and Fantasy Sequences:-

Dream or fantasy sequences are often included in surrealistic works. Sometimes we read an entire work of literature only to find out the entire story was someone’s dream. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a great example of a work based entirely on a dream that’s filled with fantasy. 

Irrational Elements:-

When you read a surrealistic work, expect irrationality. The goal of many who write in this style is to free readers from rational thought and the constraints of reality to explore what is possible, or even what can be learned or enjoyed from considering the impossible. An example would be having a person transform into an animal or a book turn into a bird. Another could be a situation in which a piece of furniture represents a gateway to another realm of reality.

The Unconscious Mind:-

In surrealistic works, characters are often driven by their unconscious minds which, of course, lead to behaviors motivated by factors unknown to them. Sometimes readers know, through an omniscient narrator, what is going on, but other times they are left wondering why the character behaves a certain way. This is common in the horror genre, which often includes surrealism. For example, when characters get up and go to a certain place at the same time each day driven by forces of which they are not conscious, such actions are surrealistic.

3) Absurdism:-

A philosophy based on the belief that the universe is irrational and meaningless and that the search for order brings the individual into conflict with the universe

Absurdism is the belief that a search for meaning is inherently in conflict with the actual lack of meaning, but that one should both accept this and simultaneously rebel against it by embracing what life has to offer.

'Absurd' The latter is defined as having no meaning, and therefore, events and actions are not tied to logical chains of events. Absurdist fiction is a genre of literature that came to prominence in the 1950s and 60s. Like other modernist movements, it was inspired by disillusionment with war and how things “were.”

Characteristics of Absurdism:-

1)Nontraditional plot structure

2)Humorous or irrational events

3)Non-Sequiturs

4)Unpredictability

5)Purposeless actions

6)Questioning of the meaning of life

7)Individualistic

8)Explores subjective feelings about existence

Conclusion:- 

This period of rapid changes characterized modern society at the time, leading artists to constantly update and refine their techniques when making art so as to accurately depict the aspirations and dreams of the modern world that had developed. Modernism was a response to the rapidly changing conditions of life due to the rise of industrialization and the beginning of wartime, with artists looking for new subject matter, working techniques, and materials to better capture this change. Whilst artists experimented with new techniques to adequately depict modern life, they also attempted to express the emotional and psychological effects of negotiating a world in rapid changes in their artworks. This was an important element in Modern art, with artists like Henri Matisse and Paul Cézanne exploring their subject matters in-depth and in ways that shocked society.

Word Count:- 1900

References:-

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Kimberly Gilbert. “Super Summary.” Supersummary, https://www.supersummary.com/stream-of-consciousness-in-literature-definition-examples/.

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