Persona

Literary/ Cultural Context Note

Litencyc Editors (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. WORLD HISTORY AND IDEAS: A CROSS-CULTURAL VOLUME.

Domains

Poetic/ rhetorical term

Dates

Places

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

The fictitious narrator imagined by the poet to speak the words of a poem. Personae are much used by Robert Browning, T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Here, for example, is the opening of a poem by Robert Browning which is presented as spoken by a Florentine monk:

Frà Lippo Lippi

Frà Lippo Lippi

I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave!You need not clap your torches to my face.Zooks, what's to blame? you think you see a monk!What, 'tis past midnight, and you go the rounds,And here you catch me at an alley's endWhere sportive ladies leave their doors ajar?The Carmine's my cloister: hunt it up,Do, - harry out, if you must show your zeal,Whatever rat, there, haps on his wrong hole,And nip each softling of a wee white mouse,Weke, weke, that's crept to keep him company!Aha, you know your

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

219 words

Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "Persona". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 01 November 2001 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=853, accessed 06 May 2024.]

Save this article