stream of consciousness

[emmy]

"Stream of Consciousness"
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

[cquirke]

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.

Knut Hamsun's "Hunger" (which I read translated into English) was the first I'd read that really portrayed the moment-by-moment thinking process. It's certainly "stream of consciousness" in the purest sense, as it's linear; the subject of thought may be at times in the past, but the way it's written, it's the protagonist's thoughts in the order they were thought.

I'd consider time disjunction as a different technique to stream of consciousness, as it is such a large topic and doesn't have to involve one or more interior monologues.

I've heard it's a tradition to start a novel at a point in the present, then go back to trace the story up to that point, and then either stop there or continue for a chapter or less. That's a bit like the journo's "tell 'em what your'e going to tell 'em, then tell 'em, then tell 'em what you told 'em" approach, I guess.

What's far more interesting, is double-tracked time-lines (often across generations and/or contexts, e.g. Piercy's "Body of Glass" / "He, She, It") or the jump-around we've seen in movies since Shortcuts and Magnolia.