Weakening Of The Conscious And Strengthening Of The Unconscious

William Carlos Williams, one of the representative poets of America in the twentieth century, overshadowed by T.S. Eliot in the early years, was gradually acknowledged by the public and imitated by the new generations regarding his creation style in the middle and later period of the twentieth century. Williams is bold in blazing new trails in the shape, the sound and the words by applying both traditional techniques—the conscious elements—and innovative ones—the unconscious elements—to the creation of poems, and such an initiative creation style not only is an enormous impact to the poetry circle, but also has boosted the development of the poetry of the day. From Plato to Freud, researchers have all avoided explaining the formation of the conscious as well as the unconscious. Therefore, this thesis will analyze the poems of Williams based on the hypothesis to the formation of the conscious and the unconscious.This thesis contains three parts.The first part is the introduction part which includes an introduction to Williams, a critical survey of Williams’s studies, the significance of the study and a hypothesis to the formation of the conscious and the unconscious.The second part which contains three chapters is the main part of the thesis. This part will treat of Williams’s poems in terms of the shape, the sound and the words respectively from the perspective of the formation of the conscious and the unconscious, and will at last analyze the conscious and the unconscious elements in his poems to uncover three stages of struggles and then to reveal the struggle circulation.Chapter one will discuss the conscious elements in Williams’s poems from the perspectives of the shape, the sound and the words, so as to uncover that the poet was influenced by the traditions and rules when composing poems.Chapter two will discuss the unconscious elements in Williams’s poems also from the perspectives of the shape, the sound and the words, so as to reveal that the poet was exercising some creativity when composing poems.Chapter three will come up with three stages of struggles as well as the struggle circulation by analyzing the essential elements of the struggles—the conscious and the unconscious and the origin of the struggles—three existence forms of poetry, and from three levels—the poet-poem level, the poem-reader level and the reader level.The third part is the conclusion part. Based on the researches in the above three chapters, this thesis will come to three stages of struggles and the struggle circulation:the first stage of struggle which refers to the poet-poem level stands for the struggle inside Williams’s mind revealed by the mixture of the conscious and the unconscious elements in his poems; the second stage of struggle which refers to the poem-reader level stands for the struggle inside the readers’mind caused by the readers when they have to tell the differences between the conscious elements and the unconscious ones while reading and appreciating Williams’s works; the third stage of struggle which refers to the reader level stands for the struggle of the readers themselves starting when a reader is producing creations while reading, in this period of time, the unconscious elements transmitted from Williams’s poems will be transferred into the material storehouse of this reader, and then, he has to struggle at the choice whether to follow the traditional way or to answer the call of the unconscious mind or to do both; the struggle circulation can be concluded as: Poet(Creator, Reader)â†'Poem(Creation)â†'Reader(Creator)â†'Creation.