Meaning Of Figure In Context

Like his contemporary, the poet Walt Whitman, nineteenth-century Black American abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass made his living through the art of self-celebration, a skill that has always figured prominently in the strategies of American literary figures. He sang his song of himself through four main versions of his autobiography, establishing himself as a mythic figure. The result of this brilliant autobiographical writing is that even scholars who are relatively unfamiliar with other nineteenth-century Black Americans are well acquainted with the major events of Douglass's life.

In typical American fashion, Douglass sought in his writings to demonstrate his individuality alongside his individualism. Yet the very self-reliance and independence he emphasized in his autobiographies represented conformity to the American archetype of the self-made individual. Thus, Douglass was, to use Emerson's phrase, a representative man. Much of the contemporary biographical and literary treatment of Douglass portrays him as exceptional. However, Douglass himself stressed the Emersonian dictum that great individuals are often great because they are representative, not because they are exceptional. For him, self-reliance often existed in the paradox of blending one's ego into larger forces, believing that what is true of oneself is true of others. Douglass's concept of self-reliance, like Emerson's, was grounded in the principle of universality rather than difference.

In the context of the passage, the word "figure" most nearly means