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Between Emerson and His Several Voices
- Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 76, Number 4, Winter 2020
- pp. 113-137
- 10.1353/arq.2020.0026
- Article
- Additional Information
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Abstract:
The voice that speaks in Emerson's essays is neither unified nor straightforwardly identifiable with the author, but plural and ventriloquial. It explores each issue from multiple perspectives and takes on rhetorical postures associated with the perspectives it inhabits. I consider the formal cues through which critics may track subtle shifts in voice and suggest that these same cues might also be useful in reading other authors associated with Transcendentalism. I intend my analysis as a demonstration of new formalist principles. If the content of Emerson's essays denies attribution to an authorial stance, then political significance is directly accountable to literary form.