Stream of consciousness

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). It was coined by psychologist William James (the brother of Henry). May Sinclair transposed the psychological term to the analysis of narrative. Novelist Dorothy Richardson started to experiment with it in her series Pilgrimage. 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 characterised 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 modernists' 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.

Historical influences

The psycho-analytical school of Sigmund Freud and its interest in the irrational workings of the human psyche and free association of ideas led to a discussion of psychology also in literature. Freud`s theories of “the preconscious and unconscious became the legitimate domain of fiction” (Friedman 7).

Furthermore, the stream of consciousness was especially influenced by the new psychology of Henri Bergson and William James. Bergson´s concept of durational flux is regarded as the “creative impulse behind the new mode of portraying character as a ceaseless stream of becoming” (Kumar Preface). William James´ Principles of Psychology (1890) first highlighted “the conception of thought as a stream and the idea of the `compounding of consciousness´ (Friedman 2) and turned the stream from a psychological into a literary concept.

The stream of consciousness is said to have aspects in common with impressionistic painting, Symbolism and cinematic techniques. It is similar to impressionism respecting the new perception of the real world. Common features of Modernist and Symbolist writings are “their use of a complicated association of ideas (and) their insistence upon inventing a special language to express individual personality”. The stream displays cinematic techniques such as motion, montage and flashbacks (Kumar 5-6).

Marcel Proust's novel A la recherche du temps perdu (1913–27) emphasized the importance of psychological time, because it was the first to show the merging of human sensory impressions and memories (Kumar 10).

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.