Impressionism

An approach to storytelling that attempts to show how the world seems to the consciousness and/or senses of a character with a limited point of view. The important word here is attempts. What the reader reads on the page is but the illusion of an impression of reality. Impressionist literature tends to emphasize the way characters experience the world, not necessarily the way the world actually is. As a result, this approach often deals with ambiguity and partial understanding. For some writers, such as Henry James, impressions are all that we have to make sense of the world because we are on the outside looking in, trying to interpret our surroundings.