MODELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE WORKS OF WILLIAM JAMES, GERTRUDE STEIN AND GEORGE SANTAYANA

This study traces the influence of William James's theory of consciousness on Gertrude Stein and George Santayana. Stein and Santayana were James's students in the 1880s and '90s at Harvard, and at the beginning of their literary careers they imported Jamesian materials into fiction and criticism. The dissertation identifies their debt, and considers why in each case a period of devotion to James was followed by a reaction against him.;The first chapters describe Stein's early fiction as an attempt to render allegorically James's model of consciousness. The pairs of antithetical characters portrayed in Three Lives and The Making of Americans are personifications of complementary principles that for James exist in every mind. In each of the couples described by Stein, one member shows exclusively what James calls the "progressive faculty" of consciousness--the ability to absorb sensations indiscriminately. Stein gives him a "conservative" counterpart who makes sense of experience by selecting among impressions and imposing rigid intellectual categories. Through intimacy, the two characters partially assume each other's qualities and approach a condition of mental balance.;Stein gradually abandoned this psychological framework. She decided that she did violence to the fullness of experience by applying stereotypes. For James, any imposition of an intellectual framework artificially reduces the variousness of the perceived universe, but is nonetheless desirable because it makes possible the achievement of particular goals. Stein objects to this view of mental life on the grounds that it emphasizes practical considerations at the expense of the aimless play of impressions.;Santayana too absorbed a great deal from James, but ultimately strained against the instrumental view of consciousness. The thesis establishes a connection between the account of mental existence in Interpretations of Poetry and Religion and Jamesian psychology. In Santayana's view, the finest poetry combines "progressive" and "conservative" elements. Yet he suggests that there is value as well in ideals divorced from their practical applications. As this position is developed in later years, it leads to a departure from James's view of consciousness.