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 without logical sequence (as in actual thought), 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 recreation 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 James Joyce, the Irish novelist and poet. Other exponents of the form were William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf. The English 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, forms an intense analysis of the development of a sensitive young woman and her responses to the world around her.