The literary movement of Modernism has developed in two main forms: the novel and the short story. The most relevant writer representing the modernist novel is Virginia Woolf; on the other side the most representative author for the modernist short story is James Joyce.

A modernist literature feature is the focus on subjectivity. Modernist writers draw their attention on their characters’ stream of consciousness, analyzing everything that crosses the character mind.

Virginia Woolf and James Joyce convey the stream of consciousness in different ways.

Mrs. Woolf uses the interior monologue to express the stream of consciousness of her characters. In her novel the narrator is a third person omniscient narrator who adopts a particular character’s point of view putting in evidence all the character’s feelings and thoughts. Sometimes Mrs. Woolf changes the point of view during the development of the novel to give to the reader a different perspective to the same reality.

In Virginia Wool’s novel there is still the use of logical and temporary connectors which let the reader recognize the kind of time.

To convey the flux of emotions and feelings of his characters, Mr. Joyce uses instead the total stream of consciousness technique, consisting in the total disintegration of syntax and in the lack of connectors and logical thread because the reader is asked to understand the semantic connections.

Joyce’s literature presents two relevant aspects: the paralysis and the symbolical realism.

The paralysis is a metaphor used by the writer to convey the inability of his characters to change themselves, to make decisions and to acts. The symbolic realism is the description of reality throughout the use of symbols. In Joyce’s stories everything has got the function to reveal a deep reality hidden behind the appearances.

So the role of the reader is very demanding because the reader is asked to cooperate with the text.