Impersonality: Seven EssaysPhilosophers have long debated the subjects of person and personhood. Sharon Cameron ushers this debate into the literary realm by considering impersonality in the works of major American writers and figures of international modernism—writers for whom personal identity is inconsequential and even imaginary. In essays on William Empson, Jonathan Edwards, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, T. S. Eliot, and Simone Weil, Cameron examines the impulse to hollow out the core of human distinctiveness, to construct a voice that is no one’s voice, to fashion a character without meaningful attributes, a being that is virtually anonymous. “To consent to being anonymous,” Weil wrote, “is to bear witness to the truth. But how is this compatible with social life and its labels?” Throughout these essays Cameron examines the friction, even violence, set in motion from such incompatibility—from a “truth” that has no social foundation. Impersonality investigates the uncompromising nature of writing that suspends, eclipses, and even destroys the person as a social, political, or individual entity, of writing that engages with personal identity at the moment when its usual markers vanish or dissolve. |
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Common terms and phrases
affect argue attention beauty benevolence Billy Budd Billy's body Brunetto Buddha faces Buddhist called character cited parenthetically Claggart claim constitute contradiction Dante dead death dissociation distinction divine Divinity School Address East Coker Edwards's Eliot Emerson's essays Empson entity essay's Essays and Lectures existence eyes fact fate feeling Four Quartets Further references genius ghost grief happiness hereafter abbreviated Herman Melville human idea identified imagine imperative impersonal individual instance Joel Porte John Haffenden Jonathan Edwards Little Gidding look loss manifestation Melville Melville's mind mistake moral nature object Over-soul pain Parfit particular passage perception personal identity philosophy poem Press question Ralph Waldo Emerson references are cited reiterated relation repr representation Schopenhauer sense sentence Simone Weil soul speaker specifically spiritual suttas T. S. Eliot things thought tion trans True Virtue understanding Univ Vere violence voice Weil’s William Empson words
References to this book
The Cambridge Introduction to The Nineteenth-Century American Novel Gregg Crane No preview available - 2007 |