Stream of Consciousness Novel
The Development of the ‘Stream-of-Consciousness’ Technique in Modernist English Fiction (with Special Reference to the Contributions of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf)
Arpan Adhikary
The term ‘stream of consciousness’ as applied in literary criticism to designate a particular mode of prose narrative was first coined by philosopher William James in his book Principles of Psychology (1890) to describe the uninterrupted flow of perceptions, memories and thoughts in active human psyche. As a literary term, however, it denotes a certain narrative technique used in novels in which the narrator records in minute but somewhat abstract way whatever passes through his or her conscious mind. The socalled ‘stream of consciousness’ in a work of prose fiction is usually rendered a proper and viable narrative form which is termed the ‘interior monologue’. The ‘stream-ofconsciousness’ novelists seek to present an objective account of the subjective process of thinking and thus profess to attain an aesthetic purity in the rendition of the genre of fiction. This technique is a product of the ‘modernist’ movement in literature in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century, but the germs of this technique are quite conspicuous also in such eighteenth century novels as Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740) and Lawrence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1759-67). The first proper application of this mode of narration is found in French novelist Edouard Dujardin’s novel Les Lauriers sont coupes or The Laurels Have Been Cut (1888). In England such writers as Henry James, Dorothy Richardson and Joseph Conrad made remarkable experiments with this mode which paved the way for James Joyce and Virginia Woolf to master this field. In such novels as Portrait of a Lady (1881) The Wings of the Dove (1902) and The Golden Bowl (1904) Henry James presented a complex, interiorized prose style quite akin to that of the proper ‘stream-of-consciousness’ novelists. Joseph Conrad in Lord Jim (1900) and
Arpan Adhikary
The term ‘stream of consciousness’ as applied in literary criticism to designate a particular mode of prose narrative was first coined by philosopher William James in his book Principles of Psychology (1890) to describe the uninterrupted flow of perceptions, memories and thoughts in active human psyche. As a literary term, however, it denotes a certain narrative technique used in novels in which the narrator records in minute but somewhat abstract way whatever passes through his or her conscious mind. The socalled ‘stream of consciousness’ in a work of prose fiction is usually rendered a proper and viable narrative form which is termed the ‘interior monologue’. The ‘stream-ofconsciousness’ novelists seek to present an objective account of the subjective process of thinking and thus profess to attain an aesthetic purity in the rendition of the genre of fiction. This technique is a product of the ‘modernist’ movement in literature in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century, but the germs of this technique are quite conspicuous also in such eighteenth century novels as Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740) and Lawrence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1759-67). The first proper application of this mode of narration is found in French novelist Edouard Dujardin’s novel Les Lauriers sont coupes or The Laurels Have Been Cut (1888). In England such writers as Henry James, Dorothy Richardson and Joseph Conrad made remarkable experiments with this mode which paved the way for James Joyce and Virginia Woolf to master this field. In such novels as Portrait of a Lady (1881) The Wings of the Dove (1902) and The Golden Bowl (1904) Henry James presented a complex, interiorized prose style quite akin to that of the proper ‘stream-of-consciousness’ novelists. Joseph Conrad in Lord Jim (1900) and