Stream of consciousness
A narrative mode depicting the flow of a character's thoughts.
Stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind of a narrator. It is usually in the form of an interior monologue which is disjointed or has irregular punctuation. While critics have pointed to various literary precursors, it was not until the 20th century that this technique was fully developed by modernist writers such as Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson and Virginia Woolf.
- field
- Literary criticism, narrative technique
- key_modernist_practitioners
- Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf
Lore & Background
James described consciousness as not appearing 'chopped up in bits' but flowing like a 'river' or 'stream'.
Reader's Guide
Stream of consciousness is a literary method of representing the flow of a character's thoughts and sense impressions, usually in an unpunctuated or disjointed form of interior monologue. While often used interchangeably with interior monologue, some sources distinguish them: psychologically, stream of consciousness is the subject matter, while interior monologue is the technique for presenting it. In literature, interior monologue presents thoughts directly without a summarizing narrator, but stream of consciousness also mingles them with impressions and perceptions and may violate grammar or logic. The technique was fully developed by modernist writers in the early 20th century, with precursors including Laurence Sterne, John Neal, Edgar Allan Poe, and Édouard Dujardin. The term has since been adopted to describe similar techniques in poetry, songwriting, and film.
Did You Know?
- Dorothy Richardson described the term as a 'lamentably ill-chosen metaphor'.
More in Narrative Forms And Devices 1-23
Spotted an error? Know more?
This is a living reference — every entry is fact-audited, and reader corrections feed straight into our audit queue. Suggest an edit · See this site's audit record