The "person" in a personal essay -- Evocations of consciousness -- Montaigne on "Montaigne": toward a poetics of self -- The mind and the mind's idiosyncrasy: ideas of consciousness in the personal essay -- Discontinuous: form of consciousness -- Evocations of personality -- Voices on voice: the singular "I" and the chameleon "I" -- Elia: pseudonymous self extraordinaire -- Never to be yourself and yet always: Virginia Woolf on the essayist's problem -- Personae and culture -- Difference and "I": cultural consciousness in the personal essay -- Orwell's "A hanging": politics and the first-person singular/plural -- Personae and personal experience -- Illness and "I": malady in the personal essay -- Days into essays: a self for all seasons.
