Stream of Consciousness

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Stream of Consciousness is also known as interior monologue. Interior monologue is a character's flow of thoughts without the author's interruption.  

William James, a psychologist, invented this term in his book The Principles of Psychology in 1920.  

James Joyce first experimented with this technique in his novel Ulysses that appeared in 1922. Then Virginia Woolf followed suit as Mrs. Dalloway.  

Georgians perceived men as complex psychological beings. Their influence indirectly helped to forge the very concept.  

Definitions

• Stream of Consciousness is an unbroken flow of thoughts and feelings in the waking mind.  
• A way of narration that attempts to give writers equivalent to the reader's mind, in a loose interior monologue.  
• In this process, sense mingles with conscious memory, feelings and random thoughts.  

Examples

1. Portrait of Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
2. To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
3. Molloy by Samuel Beckett
4. Jazz by Toni Morrison

Salient Features 

1. Marked by Incoherent Thoughts 
2. Occasional Sudden Rise Of Thoughts 
3. Lack of Punctuations 
4. Used by 20th Century Novelists and Short Story Writers

Source

Lecture of Sir Faisal