Editing Persona (section)

==In literature==
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In [[literature]], the term generally refers to a character established by an author, one in whose voice all or part of a narrative takes place. Poets such as [[Robert Browning]], [[Ezra Pound]], and [[T. S. Eliot]] are strongly associated with such narrative voices, as is the writer [[Luigi Pirandello]]. These writers understood the term slightly differently and derived its use and meaning from different traditions. Examples of Eliot's personae were "[[Prufrock]]" and [[Sweeney Agonistes|''Sweeney'']]. Pound developed such characters as [[Cino]], [[Bertran de Born]], [[Propertius]], and [[Hugh Selwyn Mauberly|Mauberley]] in response to figures in Browning’s dramatic monologues. Whereas Eliot used "masks" to distance himself from aspects of modern life which he found degrading and repulsive, Pound's personae were often poets and could be considered in good part [[alter-ego|alter ego]]s. For Pound, the personae were a way of working through a specific poetic problem. In this sense, the persona is a transparent mask, wearing the traits of two poets and responding to two situations, old and new, which are similar and overlapping.

In [[literary analysis]], any narrative voice that speaks in the first person and appears to define a particular character is often referred to as a persona. It is contrasted with a third-person narrative voice, generally taken to be more objective and impersonal. There are borderline cases, such as the "we" that occurs late in [[Edwin Arlington Robinson]]'s poem and functions something like a chorus in a Greek tragedy, but in general any identifiable narrator whose point of view or manner of speaking clearly distinguishes them from the author is considered a literary persona.

In [[fan fiction]] and in online stories, the personas may especially reflect the authors' [[self-insertion]].