Editing Stream of consciousness (section)

===Beginnings to 1900===
While the use of the narrative technique of stream of consciousness is usually associated with modernist novelists in the first part of the twentieth century, several precursors have been suggested, including [[Laurence Sterne]]'s [[psychological novel]] ''[[Tristram Shandy]]'' (1757).<ref>J. A. Cuddon, ''A Dictionary of Literary Terms''. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), p. 661; see also Robert Humphrey, ''Stream of Consciousness in the Modern Novel'' (1954). University of California Press, 1972, fn. 13, p. 127.</ref>{{examples|date=November 2019}} [[John Neal]] in his novel ''[[Seventy-Six (novel)|Seventy-Six]]'' (1823) also used an early form of this writing style, characterized by long sentences with multiple qualifiers and expressions of anxiety from the narrator.<ref>{{cite book | last = Bain | first = Robert | editor-last = Bain | editor-first = Robert | chapter = Introduction | page = xxxiv | title = Seventy-Six | title-link = Seventy-Six (novel) | year = 1971 | location = Bainbridge, New York | publisher = York Mail—Print, Inc | oclc = 40318310 | postscript = . Facsimile reproduction of 1823 Baltimore edition by [[John Neal]], two volumes in one.}}</ref> Prior to the 19th century, [[Association of Ideas|associationist]] philosophers, like [[Thomas Hobbes]] and [[Bishop Berkeley]], discussed the concept of the "[[train of thought]]". 

It has also been suggested that [[Edgar Allan Poe]]'s short story "[[The Tell-Tale Heart]]" (1843) foreshadows this literary technique in the nineteenth century.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1785800/The-Tell-Tale-Heart|title=The Tell-Tale Heart – story by Poe}}</ref> Poe's story is a [[first person narrative]], told by an unnamed narrator who endeavours to convince the reader of his sanity while describing a murder he committed, and it is often read as a [[dramatic monologue]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.eapoe.org/index.htm|title=Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore – The Life and Writings of Edgar Allan Poe|website=www.eapoe.org}}</ref> George R. Clay notes that [[Leo Tolstoy]], "when the occasion requires it ... applies Modernist stream of consciousness technique" in both ''[[War and Peace]]'' (1869) and ''[[Anna Karenina]]'' (1878).<ref>'' The Cambridge Companion to Tolstoy'', edited Donna Tussing Orwin. Cambridge University Press, 2002</ref>

The short story, "[[An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge]]" (1890), by another American author, [[Ambrose Bierce]], also abandons strict linear time to record the internal consciousness of the protagonist.<ref>Khanom, Afruza. "Silence as Literary Device in Ambrose Bierce's 'The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.' ''Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice.'' Spring 6.1 (2013): 45–52. Print.</ref> Because of his renunciation of chronology in favor of free association, [[Édouard Dujardin]]'s ''[[Les Lauriers sont coupés]]'' (1887) is also an important precursor. Indeed, [[James Joyce]] "picked up a copy of Dujardin's novel ... in Paris in 1903" and "acknowledged a certain borrowing from it".<ref>Randell StevensonJ ''Modernist Fiction''. Lexington: University of Kentucky, 1992, p. 227, fn 14.</ref>

Some point to [[Anton Chekhov]]'s short stories and plays (1881–1904)<ref>James Wood, "Ramblings". ''London Review of Books''. Vol.22, no. 11, 1 June 2000, pp. 36–7.</ref> and [[Knut Hamsun]]'s ''[[Hunger (Hamsun novel)|Hunger]]'' (1890), and ''[[Mysteries (novel)|Mysteries]]'' (1892) as offering glimpses of the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative technique at the end of the nineteenth century.<ref>[http://www.lrb.co.uk/v20/n23/wood02_.html James Wood. "Addicted to Unpredictability." 26 November 1998. ''London Review of Books''. 8 November 2008 ]</ref> While ''Hunger'' is widely seen as a classic of world literature and a groundbreaking modernist novel, ''Mysteries'' is also considered a pioneer work. It has been claimed that Hamsun was way ahead of his time with the use of stream of consciousness in two chapters in particular of this novel.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://hamsunsenteret.no/en/component/author/page/107-hamsun%27s-modernism|title=Martin Humpál: Hamsun's modernism – Hamsunsenteret – Hamsunsenteret|website=hamsunsenteret.no|access-date=9 October 2017|archive-date=8 February 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180208015053/http://hamsunsenteret.no/en/component/author/page/107-hamsun%27s-modernism|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref name=Ferguson>[https://tv.nrk.no/serie/guddommelig-galskap-knut-hamsun/PRTR64006207/13-12-2009#t=19m59s Interview with Robert Ferguson in the second episode of the documentary television series ''Guddommelig galskap – Knut Hamsun'' ]</ref> British author Robert Ferguson said: "There's a lot of dreamlike aspects of ''Mysteries''. In that book ... it is ... two chapters, where he invents stream of consciousness writing, in the early 1890s. This was long before Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce".<ref name=Ferguson/> [[Henry James]] has also been suggested as a significant precursor, in a work as early as ''[[Portrait of a Lady]]'' (1881).<ref>{{cite book|first =M. H. |last =Abrams|title =A Glossary of Literary Terms|location= New York|publisher = Harcourt Brace|date = 1999|page = 299|isbn = 9780155054523}}</ref> It has been suggested that he influenced later stream-of-consciousness writers, including [[Virginia Woolf]], who not only read some of his novels but also wrote essays about them.<ref>Woolf (March 2003)''[https://books.google.com/books?id=pn9OzR4AYdsC&pg=PA40 A Writer's Diary: Being Extracts from the Diary of Virginia Woolf]''. Harcourt.  pp. 33, 39–40, 58, 86, 215, 301, 351.</ref>

However, it has also been argued that [[Arthur Schnitzler]] (1862–1931), in his short story '"Leutnant Gustl" ("None but the Brave", 1900), was the first to make full use of the stream of consciousness technique.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/133295/stream-of-consciousness|title=stream of consciousness – literature}}</ref>