| Stream of Consciousness is a literary technique | | | | This technique was developed significantly in |
| widely used in narrative fiction to show subjective | | | | Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939) by the |
| as well as objective reality. It reveals the | | | | Irish novelist and poet James Joyce. |
| character's thoughts, feelings, and actions, often | | | | This technique is brilliantly used by the British |
| following an associative rather than a logical | | | | novelist Virginia Woolf in her novels like Mrs. |
| sequence. | | | | Dalloway (1925), and To the Light House (1927). |
| The Term First Used: | | | | The American novelist William Faulkner exploits |
| The term stream of consciousness was first | | | | this device in The Sound and the Fury (1929). |
| employed by William James, the American | | | | Dorothy Richardson, the British writer is actually |
| philosopher and psychologist, in his book The | | | | considered by some to be the pioneer who used |
| Principles of Psychology (1890) to express the | | | | this literary device. Her novel Pilgrimage |
| unbroken flow of feelings and thoughts in the | | | | (1911-1938), a 12-volume sequence is all about the |
| waking mind. Since then, it has now been adopted | | | | intense analysis of the development of a sensitive |
| to describe a narrative method in the modern | | | | young woman and how she responses to the |
| fiction. | | | | world around her. |
| Some long passages of introspection, in which the | | | | The technique of stream of consciousness tries |
| narrator records what passes through a | | | | to portray the distant, preconscious state that |
| character's awareness for instance; the chapter | | | | exists prior to the mind organizes sensations. As a |
| 42 of James' Portrait of a Lady is about the | | | | result, the re-creation of a stream of |
| narrator's description of the process of Isabel's | | | | consciousness often seems to be lacking the |
| feeling, thoughts and memories. | | | | explicit cohesion, unity, and selectivity of direct |
| How this Technique Developed: | | | | thought or idea. |