Prologue: The “Person” in a Personal Essay

Part I: 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

Part II: 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

Part III: Personae and Culture

Difference and “I”: Cultural Consciousness in the Personal Essay

Orwell’s “A Hanging”: Politics and the First Person Singular/Plural

Part IV: Personae and Personal Experience

Illness and “I”: Malady in the Personal Essay

Days into Essays: A Self for All Seasons