Includes bibliographical references (pages 205-245) and index
Introduction 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
Philosophers 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
