Stream of consciousness

This article is about the literary device. For the pre-writing technique, see Free writing. For other uses, see Stream of consciousness (disambiguation).

In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind" of a narrator.[1] It is usually in the form of an interior monologue which is disjointed or has irregular punctuation.[2] The term was first used in 1855 and was first applied to a literary technique in 1918. While critics have pointed to various literary precursors, it was not until the 20th century that this technique was fully developed by modernist writers such as Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson and Virginia Woolf.

Stream of consciousness narratives continue to be used in modern prose and the term has been adopted to describe similar techniques in other art forms such as poetry, songwriting and film.

  1. ^ J. A. Cuddon, A Dictionary of Literary Terms. (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books,1984), pp. 660–1).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).