Editing Stream of consciousness (section)

===Early twentieth century===
It was not until the twentieth century that this technique was fully developed by modernists. [[Marcel Proust]] is often presented as an early example of a writer using the stream of consciousness technique in his novel sequence ''[[À la recherche du temps perdu]]'' (1913–1927) (''In Search of Lost Time''), but Robert Humphrey comments that Proust "is concerned only with the reminiscent aspect of consciousness" and that he "was deliberately recapturing the past to communicate; hence he did not write a stream-of-consciousness novel".<ref>'' Stream of Consciousness in the Modern Novel'' (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California, 1954), p. 4.</ref> Novelist [[John Cowper Powys]] also argues that Proust did not use stream of consciousness: "while we are told what the hero thinks or what Swann thinks we are told this rather by the author than either by the 'I' of the story or by Charles Swann."<ref>"Proust". ''Enjoyment of Literature'', New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 498</ref>
{{Quote box |width=400px |align=right |quoted=true |bgcolor=#FFFFF0 |salign=right
 |quote =<poem>
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room, the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
</poem>|source =T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"<br />1915}}

''[[Pointed Roofs]]'' (1915), the first work in Richardson's [[novel sequence|series]] of 13 semi-autobiographical novels titled ''[[Pilgrimage (novel sequence)|Pilgrimage]]'',<ref name="Winning2000">{{cite book |author=Joanne Winning |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MEz_3E-SnA0C |title=The Pilgrimage of Dorothy Richardson |publisher=Univ of Wisconsin Press |year=2000 |isbn=978-0-299-17034-9}}</ref> is the first complete stream-of-consciousness novel published in English. However, in 1934, Richardson commented that "[[Proust]], [[James Joyce]], [[Virginia Woolf]], and D.R. ... were all using 'the new method', though very differently, simultaneously".<ref>In a letter to the bookseller and publisher [[Sylvia Beach]] ''Windows of Modernism: Selected Letters of Dorothy Richardson'', ed. Gloria G. Fromm Athens, Georgia, University of Georgia Press, 1995, 282.</ref> 

[[James Joyce]] was another pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness. Some hints of this technique are already present in ''[[A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man]]'' (1916), along with interior monologue, and references to a character's psychic reality rather than to his external surroundings.<ref>Deming, p. 749.</ref> Joyce began writing ''A Portrait'' in 1907 and it was first serialised in the English literary magazine ''[[The Egoist (periodical)|The Egoist]]'' in 1914 and 1915. Earlier in 1906, Joyce, when working on ''Dubliners'', considered adding another story featuring a Jewish advertising canvasser called [[Leopold Bloom]] under the title ''Ulysses''. Although he did not pursue the idea further at the time, he eventually commenced work on a novel using both the title and basic premise in 1914. The writing was completed in October 1921. Serial publication of ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]'' in the magazine ''[[The Little Review]]'' began in March 1918. ''Ulysses'' was finally published in 1922. While ''Ulysses'' represents a major example of the use of stream of consciousness, Joyce also uses "authorial description" and Free Indirect Style to register Bloom's inner thoughts. Furthermore, the novel does not focus solely on interior experiences: "Bloom is constantly shown ''from'' all round; from inside as well as out; from a variety of points of view which range from the objective to the subjective".<ref>Randell Stevenson. ''A Reader's Guide to the Twentieth-Century Novel in Britain''. University of Kentucky Press, 1993, p. 41.</ref> In his final work ''[[Finnegans Wake]]'' (1939), Joyce's method of stream of consciousness, literary allusions and free dream associations was pushed to the limit, abandoning all conventions of plot and character construction, and the book is written in a peculiar and obscure English, based mainly on complex multi-level puns.

Another early example is the use of [[interior monologue]] by [[T. S. Eliot]] in his poem "[[The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock]]" (1915), "a [[dramatic monologue]] of an urban man, stricken with feelings of isolation and an incapability for decisive action,"<ref>McCoy, Kathleen, and Harlan, Judith. ''English Literature From 1785'' (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 265–66. {{ISBN|006467150X}}</ref> a work probably influenced by the narrative poetry of [[Robert Browning]], including "[[Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister]]".<ref>William Harmon & C. Holman, ''A Handbook to Literature'' (7th edition). (Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall, 1996), p. 272.</ref>