In Modernism the narrative was developed through novel and short story. The most important exponents are Virgina Woolf and James Joyce. The aim of these writers is to create a new way to express life's experience in opposition to traditional novel which wasn't able to express reality. In Modernism the attention was about characters' subjectivity expressed by them stream of consciousness which included feelings, emotion, fears.

Woolf's narrative technique to make stream of consciousness are the interior monologue and the shift of point of view. The feature of these technique are:
• A 3rd person omniscient narrator who adopts one character's the point of view
• The free indirect speech to give the reader the sensation to follow intimately character's thoughts
• The narrator's eclipse to give attention to character's feeling using few connectors and a inner time in opposition to extern time

Joyce wants achieve a realistic way to express stream of consciousness and makes it through the "stream of consciousness technique" in which there is the syntax's disintegration: there aren't connectors and logical rational chains so as to give the reader the possibility to understand and catch semantic ties. The role of the reader is very demanding because he is asked to cooperate with the text.

Woolf like Joyce adopt a language of sense impression to make in a realistic way what happens in character's mind.

In Dubliners Joyce via the paralysis' metaphor express the inability to change. The metaphor is expression of symbolical realism adopted by Joyce to reveal the deep reality behind the appearances.

Joyce take inspiration by French symbolism and classical epic tradition. Myth function is to show how man isn't change in the time, how the human component is unchanged.