Voice

The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms - Ross Murfin 2018

Voice

Voice: A term referring to: (1) the manner of expression of the speaker in a literary work (particularly the narrator) or of a character in the work (e.g., Huck Finn’s “voice”); (2) the style of a given author (e.g., the “voice” of American poet Walt Whitman); or (3) the unique and pervasive human presence that the reader or audience senses is the driving force behind a literary work and the source of its ethical norms and values. This creative authorial voice, which reader-response critic Wayne C. Booth called the implied author in The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961), underlies every element of the work (characterization, imagery, plot, theme, etc.), whether written in an objective or subjective manner.