The Psychological Novel & Important Facts

A Brief Introduction

The Modern Novel of the modern psychological novel, or the stream of consciousness novel, or the novel of silent, internal monologue, or the modern analytical was born between 1913 and 1915. The beginning of the Psychological may be traced in the 18th century in the novels of Samuel Richardson. The chief interest of his best novel Clarissa is definitely psychological and theme offered him great scope for profound and microscopic insight into the workings of emotion.

Important Facts to Remember

1. The revolutionary discoveries in the field of Psychology by Freud and Jung laid the foundation of Psychological novel. Freud and Jung held that human personality consisted of conscious, sub-conscious and unconscious.

2. One of the important psychological novelists is James Joyce in whom the twentieth century passion for experiment in literary form reached its clemax. Though his novels The Portrait of the Artist as a young man’ and Finnegans wake are great novels, Ulysses in his masterpiece.

3. Virginia Woolf followed the footsteps of James Joyce. Her major novels are Mrs. Dalloway and “To the Light house’ she is one of the greatest novelists of this genre.

4. The method of writing Psychological novel does not allow the author to point a large number of characters drawn memorably and powerfully. It necesseitates that the creator must identify himself or herself with a single character at a time.

5. Katherine mansfield also presented the significant moment on human relationship, the curious and subtle adventure and the poignant ironies of contrasting human emotions.

6. The method by characterization in the modern novel has undergone a great change. The traditional way of the delineation of character has been discarded just as the story, as also the character has decayed in the modern novel.