The concept of voice was of central importance to Valery. It was representative of the most intimate aspects of the self, the means by which we achieve consciousness and affirm meaning - the knowledge of a lost unity and the desire to recapture it. Interweaving analysis of Valery's poetry and prose with wider critical concerns, Kirsteen Anderson shows that voice is central not only to the study of Valery's writing but also to a range of issues in contemporary critical enquiry, notably autobiography, psychoanalysis and feminism.