Abstract
One of the modern confessional poetry’s characteristics in New Criticism allows for the poet to speak through a persona. Besides uncovering their fictive nature, this study explores the archetypes of Confessionalism exhibited in Conchitina Cruz’s Elsewhere Held and Lingered. Using Margaret Atwood’s theory of “doubleness,” this study asserts that any persona can perform various voices. Describing it as a “bifurcated voice,” Cruz’s persona shows their duality through shifting sentiments on distress and desire. Bronwyn Davies further detailed that a confessional voice nonetheless reveals to be “fragmented, contradictory, always unfolding, embodied knowing.” As they often declare themselves behind the seemingly egoistic first-person pronoun “I,” Jonathan Culler’s concept of “performative temporality” proclaimed how they exist and act according to their remembered past, complex present, and imagined future. Given the study’s clear opposition against the poet-as-the-persona, it likewise aims to further discuss the research gaps on textual identity and the persona’s way of being in their created reality. The question dwells on the aspects as to how Cruz’s persona reveals their double or the alter ego that is considered to be evasive and slippery.
Presenters
Janielle VillameraGraduate, Faculty of Arts and Letters, University of Santo Tomas, Philippines
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Confessionalism, Confessional Poetry, Persona, Double Identity, Voice
