Stream of Consciousness

Narrative inside the mind's flow: perception, memory, and association rendered without a arranging narrator.

Specifications & Metrics

era

c. 1890 – present

region

Europe and America

key figures

William James (term), James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner

exemplar

Ulysses (1922); Mrs Dalloway (1925); The Sound and the Fury (1929)

introduced

1890

Core Principles & Analysis

• William James coined the phrase in his 1890 Principles of Psychology.
• Joyce's Molly Bloom and Woolf's Clarissa Dalloway set its landmarks.
• It traded plot for the mind's own associative timing.

Sources

• Wikipedia: Stream of consciousness