persona

In relation to poetry or fiction, persona refers to the consciousness of the speaker or narrator, respectively. This persona is a creation of the author to distinguish the speaker in a poem or a narrator in a short story or a novel from the author or a character. If we describe the tone of voice in a poem, for instance, then we are saying something about the persona of the speaker. If a narrator seems to sympathize with a character in a novel, we might describe the narrator's persona as sympathetic.