Stream of consciousness

Stream of consciousness is a literary term that describes a “mode of narration that undertakes to reproduce, without a narrator's intervention, the full spectrum and continuous flow of a character's mental process, in which sense perceptions mingle with conscious and half-conscious thoughts, memories, expectations, feelings, and random associations” (Abrams 299). The technique was refined in the 1920s and is a hallmark of Modernist classics such as James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) or Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway (1925).

Definition

Due to its vagueness, the term has been used either as an equivalent of the interior monologue, as an umbrella term for various different stylistic techniques, which aim to express the subject matter of human consciousness, or as the designation of a type of novel (Friedman 2/3).

Subject matter

With regard to the content, the stream of consciousness novel is characterized by the “the expression of an inner awareness” (Humphrey 5). Modernist writers encouraged their readers to turn to their inner world and draw their attention exclusively to the individual reality. It was believed that one could not trust anymore in the external world of the new Age, since it was in a constant state of change. The stream of consciousness therefore describes the modernist’s anxiety towards this world of uncertainty. The fictional characters display feelings such as alienation, disillusionment, anger or fear and the “preoccupation with the ultimate nature of reality” (Kumar, 3). Identity and the self, isolation and the failure to communicate as well as the importance to live in the moment are, amongst others, the predominant themes expressed in stream of consciousness fiction.

Sources

• Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 7th Edition. Orlando: Harcourt Brace, 1999.
• Friedman, Melvin. Stream of consciousness – a study in literary method. Folcroft, PA: Folcroft Press, 1970.
• Humphrey, Robert. Stream of consciousness in the modern novel. 8th Edition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972.
• Kumar, Shiv K. Bergson and the stream of consciousness novel. 2nd Edition. New York: New York University Press, 1963.