I don't think that "entering your own text under
your real name or an assumed one" is the same as "speaking
in your own voice". Byron's narrator in *Don Juan* just like
John Fowles's in *The French Luitenant's Woman* "gets
into" his text on occasion--at least, a character who uses the
pronoun "I" authoritatively does (to have a housemaid's
pail emptied over his head while evesdropping). Salman
Rushdie does this in *The Satanic Verses* too--it's
standard postmodern fare. But--to get back to
Byron--when he speaks to his reader in his digressions
AS a person who has swum the Hellespont, wrote *Cain*
and the the earlier cantos of *DJ*, has had an unfortunate
marriage, harbours an inverterate hatred of those
"who war with Thought" etc etc--in other words, AS the
actual historical figure we call "Byron"--and then he gives this
reader his views on Avarice, modern inventions, love, indigestion,
mortality, hangover cures, the Lake Poets etc etc--he is clearly
speaking in his own voice as authentically as is possible--and
perhaps more so than those who attempt this in the
Rousseauist-confessional tradition.
Regards.
Catherine Addison.
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