What is the definition of persona?
The definition of persona in literature is the character or voice an author adopts in a work.
Persona
Last Updated on February 25, 2021, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 104
Persona - a character in drama or fiction or the part any one sustains in the world or in a book. Persona also denotes the “I” who speaks in a poem or novel.
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The term is from the Latin persona, meaning “actor’s mask,” “character acted,” or “human being.”
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The term was used in Jungian psychology as “Public personality,” which means the facade or mask presented to the world, but not representative of inner feelings and emotions. Two well-known personas are the narrator in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Gulliver of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.
see: monologue, point of view
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