Famous Figures

Leaves of Grass, with its inclusive democratic address to every reader across time and its celebration of human bodies and experiences as mutually recognizable, reflects a Connection orientation in which the poet's function is to dissolve the boundaries between self and other.

His fictional and critical insistence on the phrase Only connect as the governing principle of human flourishing reflects a Connection orientation treated as both aesthetic and ethical imperative.

His love poetry, which treats the beloved as a presence that dissolves the boundary between self and world, reflects a Connection orientation in which the experience of genuine relatedness is the primary subject of literary art.

Her memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings reflects a Connection orientation in which the act of honest self-disclosure creates the conditions for readers' recognition and belonging, treating vulnerability as the medium of genuine contact.

Her literary practice, which required readers to inhabit the interior lives of characters whose experience differed profoundly from theirs, reflects a Connection orientation in which literature's function is to make genuine empathic contact possible across social divisions.

His stories and plays, which present ordinary human beings at moments of genuine recognition of each other across social barriers, reflect a Connection orientation applied to literary form as a technical as well as ethical commitment.

Her diary's consistent orientation toward imagined connection with a future reader, maintained through two years of isolation and threat, reflects a Connection orientation that persists even when physical contact is impossible.

Dickens performed public readings of his own work to packed houses because he discovered the physical presence of an audience completed the act of writing. His documented ability to make large rooms of strangers weep simultaneously reflects a Connection orientation applied to the technology of the novel.