Definition

Primarily associated with the modernist movement, stream of consciousness is a form of interior monologue which
claims as its goal the representation of a lead consciousness in a narrative (typically fiction). This representation of
consciousness can include perceptions or impressions, thoughts incited by outside sensory stimuli, and fragments of
random, disconnected thoughts. Stream of consciousness writing often lacks "correct" punctuation or syntax,
favoring a looser, more incomplete style.

The coining of the term has generally been credited to the American psychologist William James, older brother of
novelist Henry James. It was used originally by psychologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to
describe the personal awareness of one’s mental processes. In The Principles of Psychology, Chapter IX, The Stream
of Thought, James provides a phenomenological description of this sense-ation of consciousness: “Consciousness,
then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as ‘chain’ or ‘train’ do not describe it fitly as it
presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A ‘river’ or a ‘stream’ are the metaphors by which
it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of
subjective life” (239) [emphasis in the original]. It is helpful at the outset to distinguish stream of consciousness
from free association. Stream of consciousness, from a psychological perspective, describes metaphorically the
phenomenon—the continuous and contiguous flow of sensations, impressions, images, memories and thoughts—
experienced by each person, at all levels of consciousness, and which is generally associated with each person’s
subjectivity, or sense of self. Free association, on the other hand, is a process in which apparently random data
collected by a subject allow connections to be made from the unconscious, subconscious and preconscious mind(s)
to the conscious mind of that subject. Translated and mapped to the space of narrative literatures, free association
can be one textual element used to signify the stream of consciousness.

As a literary term, stream of consciousness appears in the early twentieth century at the intersection of three
apparently disparate projects: the developing science of psychology (e.g., investigations of the forms and
manifestations of consciousness, as elaborated by Freud, Jung, James, and others), the continuing speculations of
western philosophy as to the nature of being (e.g., investigations of consciousness in time by Henri Bergson), and
reactionary forces in the arts which were turning away from realism in the late nineteenth century in favor of
exploration of a personal, self-conscious subjectivity. The psychological term was appropriated to describe a
particular style of novel, or technique of characterization that was prevalent in some fictional works. This technique
relied upon the mimetic (re)presentation of the mind of a character and dramatized the full range of the character’s
consciousness by direct and apparently unmediated quotation of such mental processes as memories, thoughts,
impressions, and sensations. Stream of consciousness, constituting as it did the ground of self-awareness, was
consequently extended to describe those narratives and narrative strategies in which the overt presence of the
author/narrator was suppressed in favor of presenting the story exclusively through the (un/sub/pre)conscious
thought of one or more of the characters in the story. Although examples of stream of consciousness techniques can
arguably be found in narratives written during the last several centuries, it is British writers who are generally most
often cited as exemplars of the stream of consciousness technique associated with the high modern period of the
early twentieth century; they are Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and Dorothy Richardson.

Bearing in mind the origin of the term, it is easy to see why some Anglo-American literary critics and theorists have
subsumed all textual manifestations of the mental activity of characters in a narrative under the overarching term
stream of consciousness. While convenient, this tendency belies the rich range and depth of narrative methods for
(re)presenting a character’s consciousness, often best described by the terms originally naming them. Consider, for
example, the French term monologue intérieur, rendered obviously enough in English as interior monologue. In this
instance, a running monologue—similar to those we all experience inside our own minds but, importantly, cannot
experience in the minds of others except in fictional narrative—is textually rendered as the unmediated but
articulated, logical thoughts of a fictional character. That this monologue is unmediated, presented to the reader
without either authorial or narratorial intervention or the common textual signs associated with narrative speech
(e.g., quotation marks or attributive verbs), is crucial to establishing in the reader the sense of access to the
consciousness of the character. That it is logical and respects grammatical form and syntax, as opposed to appearing
a random collection of disconnected thoughts and images, distinguishes it from another textual rendering of the
stream of consciousness, that of sensory impression.

Sensory impression occurs as simple lists of a character’s sensations or impressions, sometimes with ellipses
separating the elements or lists. These unconscious or preconscious sensory impressions (re)present the inarticulable
thoughts, the image-inations of a character not experienced as words. To prevent free associations stemming from
such sensory impressions running away with and destroying the flow and integrity of the narrative, a story must
somehow be anchored within the stream of consciousness. One method is a recurring motif or theme. The motif
appears on the surface of a character’s thoughts, then disappears among the flow of memories, sensations and
impressions it initiates only to resurface some time later, perhaps in a different form, to pull the story back up into
the consciousness of both the character and the reader. Consider, in particular, the example of Virginia’s Woolf’s
short story “The Mark on the Wall.” The story begins as a meditation—which could easily be read as a spoken
monologue—on a series of recollected events but quickly turns, through the motif of a mark seen by the narrator
over a mantle piece on the wall, to a near random stream of loosely connected memories and impressions. As the
story progresses, the mark and speculations as to its nature and origin appear and disappear as a thread running in
and out of and binding the loose folds of the narrator’s recollections. The narrator’s stream of consciousness ranges
widely over time and space whereas the narrator quite clearly remains bound to a particular place and time,
anchored—seemingly—by the mark on the wall.

While not generally considered a textual manifestation of stream of consciousness in the conventional sense—in part
because associated with third person rather than first person narration—another method of (re)presenting the
consciousness of characters is free indirect discourse (in French, style indirect libre) or reported or experienced
speech (from the German term, erlebte Rede). Consider the following, from the ending paragraphs of Joyce’s short
story “The Dead”: “He wondered at his riot of emotions an hour before. From what had it proceeded? From his
aunt’s supper, from his own foolish speech, from the wine and dancing, the merry-making when saying good-night
in the hall, the pleasure of the walk along the river in the snow. Poor Aunt Julia! She, too, would soon be a shade
with the shade of Patrick Morkan and his horse” (222). The first sentence is clearly the narrator telling what the
character, Gabriel, is thinking; but with the second sentence a transition in the form of a series of sensory
impressions moves the reader to Gabriel’s own conscious thoughts. In the end, it is not the narrator who thinks,
“Poor Aunt Julia!”

Examples

"Such fools we all are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one
sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps,
the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can't be dealt with, she felt
positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life. In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, trudge; in
the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass
bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was
what she loved; life; London; this moment of June."
-Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

Critical Debates

Gerald Prince contests the term's frequent association with "interior monologue in his Dictionary of Narratology,
writing:

"Though interior monologue and stream of consciousness have often been considered interchangeable, they
have also frequently been contrasted: the former would present a character's thoughts rather than
impressions or perceptions, while the latter would present both impressions and thoughts; or else, the
former would respect morphology and syntax, whereas the latter would not...and would thus capture
throught in its nascent stage, prior to any logical connection" (94).

Definition:

Stream of Consciousness is a literary technique which was pioneered by Dorthy Richardson, Virginia Woolf, and
James Joyce. Stream of consciousness is characterized by a flow of thoughts and images, which may not always
appear to have a coherent structure or cohesion. The plot line may weave in and out of time and place, carrying the
reader through the life span of a character or further along a timeline to incorporate the lives (and thoughts) of
characters from other time periods.

Writers who create stream-of-consciousness works of literature focus on the emotional and psychological processes
that are taking place in the minds of one or more characters. Important character traits are revealed through an
exploration of what is going on in the mind.
Also Known As:

Interior Monologue
Common Misspellings:

stream of conscients, steam of consciousness

Examples:

The first example of stream of consciousness is sometimes said to be "Les Lauriers sont Coupes" (We'll to the
Woods No More), by Edouard Dujardin, but some of the best known examples include: Virginia Woolf's To the
Lighthouse (1927), James Joyce's Ulysses (1918) and William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (1929).

classiclit.about.com/od/literaryterms/g/aa_stream.htm