Essayistic Personae and Personhood

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Abstract

This chapter examines how essayistic personae enabled writers and readers to understand personhood as a means of making a unity out of multiplicity. It draws on Thomas Hobbes’s theory of the person to track how essayistic personae both depicted corporate personhood and themselves served as corporate persons, allowing many writers, real or imagined, to write as one. It also uses Locke’s theory of personhood to show how essayistic personae present conscious persons as contingent unities imposed upon multitudinous thoughts and experiences. Essayistic personae not only extended personhood to non-human beings, such as corporations and animals, they also drew attention to the limited nature of personhood for many human beings, including married women and enslaved people.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationThe Cambridge History of the British Essay
EditorsDenise Gigante, Jason Childs
PublisherCambridge University Press
Chapter10
Pages137-151
Number of pages15
ISBN (Electronic)9781009030373
ISBN (Print)9781316516508
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 31 Oct 2024

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