monologue

monologue an extended speech by one person only. Strindberg's one-act play The Stronger, spoken entirely by one person, is an extreme example of monologue. Soliloquy is synonymous, but usually refers to a character in a play talking or thinking aloud to himself, giving the audience information essential to the plot. The most obvious example is Hamlet's "To be or not to be …" soliloquy. The dramatic monologue is a lyric poem in which one person speaks, reporting to a silent listener what other characters say and do, while providing insight into his own character, e.g., Browning's "My Last Duchess" and T. S. Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Interior monologue is a narrative technique meant to reproduce a character's thoughts, feelings, and associations in the untidy fashion in which they flow through the mind. The Molly Bloom section at the end of James Joyce's novel Ulysses is the most frequently cited example of perfect use of the device.

interior monologue, an extended representation in prose or verse of a character's unspoken thoughts, memories, and impressions, rendered as if directly ‘overheard’ by the reader without the intervention of a summarizing narrator. The device is distinguished from the dramatic monologue by the fact that the thoughts are unspoken, rather than addressed to an auditor. Many modern poems make use of this convention, and it is widely employed in modern fiction, notably in the deliberately incoherent ‘stream of consciousness’ style adopted by D. Richardson, J. Joyce, and others.

mon·o·logue / ˈmänlˌôg; -ˌäg/ • n. a long speech by one actor in a play or movie, or as part of a theatrical or broadcast program. ∎  the form or style of such speeches: the play oscillates between third-person narration and monologue. ∎  a long and typically tedious speech by one person during a conversation: Fred carried on with his monologue as if I hadn't spoken. DERIVATIVES: mon·o·log·ic / ˌmänlˈäjik/ adj. mon·o·log·i·cal / ˌmänlˈäjikəl/ adj. mon·o·log·ist / məˈnäləjist/ (also -logu·ist ) n. mon·o·log·ize / məˈnäləˌjīz/ v.