Interior Monologue

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

John Mepham (Kingston University)
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  • The Literary Encyclopedia. WORLD HISTORY AND IDEAS: A CROSS-CULTURAL VOLUME.

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Interior monologue is one particular kind of

stream of consciousness

writing (which is discussed in a separate entry in this Encyclopedia). Stream of consciousness writing aims to provide a textual equivalent to the imagined stream of consciousness in the mind of a fictional character. Writers wanted to display for readers’ inspection, in a way that is impossible in real life, their characters’ private inner lives. These were imagined as containing many different kinds of “mind stuff” (as it was called by William James, the psychologist who coined the term “stream of consciousness”): verbalised thoughts, subliminal thoughts, perceptions, images, sensations and so on. Interior monologue, or quoted stream of consciousness, presents characters’ thought streams exclusively in…

4036 words

Citation: Mepham, John. "Interior Monologue". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 October 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=557, accessed 19 March 2024.]

557 Interior Monologue 2 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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