Describe with Examples the Impact of the New Psychology on Literature

question 3

Essay

Describe with examples the impact of the new psychology on literature: Proust,Kafka,Joyce,and
E.
E.
E.Cummings.
The impact of the new psychology and Freud's pessimistic view of human nature affected all aspects of artistic expression,not the least of which was literature.A great many figures in early twentieth-century fiction were profoundly influenced by Freud,such as Marcel Proust,Franz Kafka,James Joyce,and
E.Cummings.In the works of these novelists,the most significant events are those that take place in the psychic life of dreams and memory.The narrative line of the story may be interrupted by unexpected leaps of thought,intrusive recollections,self-reflections,and sudden dead ends.Fantasy may alternate freely with rational thought.Proust's Remembrance of Things Past explored the role of memory in retrieving past experience and in shaping the private life of the individual.Proust's mission was to rediscover a sense of the past by reviving sensory experiences buried deep within his psyche,that is,to bring the unconscious life to the conscious level."For me," explained Proust,"the novel is ...psychology in space and time."
Kafka brought Freudian subconscious to macabre and disorienting stories.His novels and short stories take on the reality of dreams in which characters are nameless,details are precise but grotesque,and events lack logical consistency.In the nightmarish world of his novels,the central characters become victims of unknown or imprecisely understood forces.His style,which builds on deliberate ambiguity and fearful contradiction,has had a major influence on modern fiction.From Freud's works,Joyce drew inspiration for the interior monologue,a literary device consisting of the private musings of a character in the form of a "stream of consciousness"-a succession of images and ideas connected by free association rather than by logical argument or narrative sequence.The stream-of-consciousness device recalls the technique of free association used by Freud in psychotherapy.Modern poets,such as Cummings,avidly seized upon stream-of-consciousness techniques to emancipate poetry from syntactical and grammatical bonds.Cummings poked fun at modern society by packing his verse with slang,jargon,and sexual innuendo,a literary analogue to Freud's concept of libido.

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