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shifting persona

Device
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 speaker who adopts multiple, sometimes conflicting identities across a poem, enabling polyphonic perspectives and dynamic self-revision.

Detailed Definition
Shifting persona is a poetic strategy where the speaker’s identity, gender, or perspective changes within a single poem or sequence, allowing exploration of multiple subjectivities; used by poets like Fernando Pessoa or Claudia Rankine, it challenges fixed notions of self and voice in favor of fluid, dialogic expression.
Example
Example in poetry:
Pessoa’s heteronyms (Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis); Claudia Rankine shifting between “you” and “I”; T.S. Eliot’s Tiresias in The Waste Land; Sylvia Plath’s “Ariel” merging horse, woman, and myth
Additional Notes
Shifting persona involves a speaker adopting multiple voices or identities within a poem to explore complexity, contradiction, or social roles; it’s central to dramatic monologue and postmodern lyric.
Also Known As
Protean voice mutable speaker chameleonic narrator shifting mask Labile voice
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