| 词组 | persona |
| 释义 | persona From the comments in Harper 1975, 1985, Reader's Digest 1983, Howard 1978, Gowers in Fowler 1965, and Copperud 1980, it is clear that the commentators are not completely familiar with this word. Reader's Digest says it originated in the psychological theory of Carl Gustav Jung and has passed into popular or extended use; the editors of Harper agree with a panelist who terms it "nouveau and faddistic"; Copperud calls it a fad to use persona where person will do and calls it a technical term in psychology; Gowers also notes that it is a Jungian term. Howard, on the other hand, identifies it as a technical term in literary criticism, and he dislikes its use as a substitute for image or personality. The commentators have gotten little guidance from dictionaries. Much of this commentary is correct: there is popular use; persona is a term identified with the psychology of Jung; it is likewise a term considerably used in literary criticism. It seems to have been brought into English from Latin by Joseph Addison in 1704; he used it in its original Latin sense "an actor's mask," and he was writing about Roman actors. This etymologically primary meaning has subsequently been used in English context, but its users have often tended to treat persona as a Latin word, though Addison did not. Here is another writer who has used this sense as English: • ... and, to employ a metaphor that has become fashionable in erudite circles, he appears to his readers in a persona and thus shows not a face but a mask, as though he were an actor in a drama presented to an audience in ancient Athens —Eric Partridge, British and American English Since 1900, 1951 No dictionary of which we are aware includes this sense as English; it is certainly of low frequency. It was the sense of "mask" that appealed to Ezra Pound, who is one of the people responsible for enlarging the word's domain. • Ever since he began printing his poems, Mr. Pound has played with the Latin word persona. Persona, etymologically, was something through which sounds were heard, and thus a mask. Actors used masks through which great thoughts and actions acquired voice. Mr. Pound's work has been to make personae, to become himself, as a poet, in this special sense a person through which what has most interested him in life and letters might be given voice — R. P. Blackmur, The Double Agent, 1935 Pound used the word as a title as early as 1909. It is from Pound's use and from criticism of Pound's work that persona acquired its use as a term in literary criticism. According to a citation in the OED Supplement, some of the works of C. G. Jung had been translated into English by 1917. Persona was a term Jung used: • I term the outer attitude, or outer character, the persona, the inner attitude I term the anima, or soul — Psychological Types, translated by H. G. Baynes, 1924 Jung's theories had many explicators in English. As the following examples show, each one seemed to give a little individual twist to Jung's notion: • persona ... That part of the conscious mind which comes into relation with the external world (Jung) — Richard H. Hutchings, M.D., A Psychiatric Word Book, 1939 • The persona is the agent responsible for the adaptation of the individual's inner constitution to the environmental world —Times Literary Supp., 9 May 1942 Persona is Jung's celebrated word for the mask that the ego wears before society —Times Literary Supp., 12 May 1950 • A related concept is the "persona," which refers to the role played by the individual in society The persona is not a part of the true character but is firmly attached to it and acts as a sort of protection of the inner man —Gerald S. Blum, Psychoanalytic Theories of Personality, 1953 It is hard to tell just how close each of these explanations is to Jung's original notion, but it is worth noting that the concept appears to have become externalized: if Jung considered the persona an aspect of the individual's personality, it has become in the last two explanations a kind of separate entity acting as a protection or buffer. This view of the persona from the outside as a kind of independent entity—perhaps influenced by the original "mask" sense of the word—proved to be suggestive to writers. It invaded the world of literary criticism, providing new life and new dimension to the Ezra Pound-centered use: • You might call it a mask, or as Jung would say, a persona that soon had a life of its own —Malcolm Cowley, New Republic, 18 Mar. 1946 And it also started on an independent life of its own as a word for a person's public personality: • A likeable personality, he seemed to me, quite without the arrogance I had been led to expect. But he may have been giving his persona a night off —J. B. Priestley, Irish Digest, April 1955 • ... his major work ... is an appendage to his public persona rather than a great book —Anthony West, New Yorker, 10 Dec. 1955 • Few Englishmen have such an officially English persona —V. S. Pritchett, N.Y. Times Mag, 21 Sept. 1958 • ... the differences between the modern author's persona as conveyed to the public and his character as seen by his intimates —Frank Swinnerton, Saturday Rev., 2 Mar. 1957 You may have noticed that each of the examples given so far has a certain amount of age—all of them are over 30. We have selected them to demonstrate that these uses are far from brand-new or "nouveau." What probably attracted the critics' attention is the frequency with which persona is currently used. The literary use is flourishing, as is the "public personality" use. We add two more recent examples of each: • ... one might argue the "I" of the poem is more often than not a persona created by the poet especially for the occasion —Times Literary Supp., 25 Jan. 1974 • But even a lyric poem posits some self that is moved to utterance. The posited self of a lyric may be taken as purely fictional or as a shadowy persona of a literal self, the author —Robert Penn Warren, Democracy and Poetry, 1975 • Wayne and Cooper developed personae which they controlled and exhibited skillfully —Stanley Kauff-mann, Before My Eyes, 1980 • ... masked her frightful bouts of pain and debility with the glamorous, heavily made-up, in the end sybylline persona who sought to be entertaining — John Updike, N. Y. Times Book Rev., 23 Feb. 1986 We caution you that these are only the most common uses of persona. There is a legal sense we have not mentioned. There are also other quite recent uses that leave us uncertain—they may only be temporary aberrations, or they may be new senses just developing. Only time will tell. One of these is a sense apparently meaning "inner or basic self," which is the polar opposite of Jung's sense. If it becomes well-established, use of persona might become a genuinely confusing matter. In the meantime we would suggest that you should probably confine your use of persona to the two currently popular uses. |
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