Stream of Consciousness

Stream of Consciousness, literary technique, first used in the late 19th century, employed to evince subjective as well as objective reality. It reveals the character's feelings, thoughts, and actions, often following an associative rather than a logical sequence, without commentary by the author.

Stream of consciousness is often confused with interior monologue, but the latter technique works the sensations of the mind into a more formal pattern: a flow of thoughts inwardly expressed, similar to a soliloquy. The technique of stream of consciousness, however, attempts to portray the remote, preconscious state that exists before the mind organizes sensations. Consequently, the re-creation of a stream of consciousness frequently lacks the unity, explicit cohesion, and selectivity of direct thought.

Stream of consciousness, as a term, was first used by William James, the American philosopher and psychologist, in his book The Principles of Psychology (1890). Widely used in narrative fiction, the technique was perhaps brought to its highest point of development in Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939) by the Irish novelist and poet James Joyce. Other exponents of the form were American novelist William Faulkner and British novelist Virginia Woolf. The British writer Dorothy Richardson is considered by some actually to be the pioneer in use of the device. Her novel Pilgrimage (1911-1938), a 12-volume sequence, is an intense analysis of the development of a sensitive young woman and her responses to the world around her.