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fractured persona

Concept
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A poetic speaker whose identity is fragmented, inconsistent, or multiply voiced

Detailed Definition
A fractured persona is a poetic speaker whose voice, identity, or perspective is deliberately fragmented through shifts in diction, register, or self-reference, reflecting psychological dislocation, multiplicity of self, or the instability of subjectivity in postmodern or trauma-informed poetry.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus,” the speaker shifts between victim, performer, and phoenix; In T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” the persona vacillates between confidence and self-doubt; In Claudia Rankine’s “Citizen,” the “you” shifts between reader, speaker, and collective Black experience; In Ocean Vuong’s “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous,” the poetic “I” fractures into son, lover, immigrant, and ghost.
Additional Notes
A fractured persona presents a speaker whose identity is unstable, contradictory, or multiply voiced; common in postmodern or trauma poetry—use shifts in diction, perspective, or syntax to signal fragmentation.
Also Known As
Splintered speaker divided voice fractured self polyphonic persona divided speaker Unstable narrator
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