LEADER 03795nam 2200757 a 450 001 9910968659503321 005 20200520144314.0 010 $a9786612426216 010 $a9781282426214 010 $a1282426214 010 $a9780226091334 010 $a0226091333 024 7 $a10.7208/9780226091334 035 $a(CKB)2550000000000021 035 $a(EBL)471840 035 $a(OCoLC)527657991 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000338941 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)11233052 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000338941 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10298797 035 $a(PQKB)10733913 035 $a(StDuBDS)EDZ0000117471 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC471840 035 $a(DE-B1597)524644 035 $a(OCoLC)1135587304 035 $a(DE-B1597)9780226091334 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL471840 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10349939 035 $a(CaONFJC)MIL242621 035 $a(Perlego)1852321 035 $a(EXLCZ)992550000000000021 100 $a20060315d2007 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aur|n|---||||| 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 10$aImpersonality $eseven essays /$fSharon Cameron 205 $a1st ed. 210 $aChicago $cUniversity of Chicago Press$d2007 215 $a1 online resource (281 p.) 300 $aDescription based upon print version of record. 311 08$a9780226091327 311 08$a0226091325 311 08$a9780226091310 311 08$a0226091317 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references (p. 205-245) and index. 327 $aIntroduction by way of William Empson's Buddha faces -- What counts as love : Jonathan Edwards's "True virtue" -- Representing grief : Emerson's "Experience" -- The way of life by abandonment : Emerson's Impersonal -- The practice of attention : Simone Weil's Performance of impersonality -- "The sea's throat" : T. S. Eliot's Four quartets -- "Lines of stones" : the unpersonified impersonal in Melville's Billy Budd. 330 $aPhilosophers 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. 606 $aAmerican literature$xHistory and criticism 606 $aSelf in literature 606 $aIdentity (Psychology) in literature 606 $aPersona (Literature) 615 0$aAmerican literature$xHistory and criticism. 615 0$aSelf in literature. 615 0$aIdentity (Psychology) in literature. 615 0$aPersona (Literature) 676 $a814/.3 700 $aCameron$b Sharon$0700507 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910968659503321 996 $aImpersonality$94366198 997 $aUNINA