Functions of Inner Monologue and Free Association in Andrei Bely’s “Petersburg”

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.211025.055How to use a DOI?

Keywords

“Petersburg”, Stream of consciousness, Inner monologue, Free association

Abstract

“Petersburg” is a classic masterpiece by Russian symbolist poet and writer Andrei Bely. In this novel, Bely downplayed the plot of the story, subverting the traditional plot-based, straightforward writing style, and often used inner monologues and free associations to cleverly create the flow of consciousness. Starting from these two points, this article analyzes how the author skillfully uses the stream of consciousness creation skills to show the truth of the characters’ hearts, reveal their rich inner activities, and dig out the grand theme in the works. The novel “Petersburg” is full of random associations, fragmentary memories, and time dislocations. Through the stream of consciousness creation technique, such as fragmentary memories and random associations, Andrei Bely created many colorful characters and showed the social background of the character formation, thus cleverly summoning the enduring issue of “the way out for Russia”. Meanwhile, it is entrusted to the author’s hope that religion can change the world.

Copyright

© 2021, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Zhao Wei
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/10/26
TI  - Functions of Inner Monologue and Free Association in Andrei Bely’s “Petersburg”
BT  - Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Language, Communication and Culture Studies (ICLCCS 2021)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 331
EP  - 335
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.211025.055
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.211025.055
ID  - Wei2021
ER  -