The Essay

1. The Essay Prose Other than fiction

2. How is an essay defined? • “A moderately brief prose on a restricted topic.” Harmon/Holman • “A prose composition usually from 2 to 20 pages, dealing with or taking off from a restricted topic.” Quinn • “Any brief composition in prose that undertakes to discuss a matter, express a point of view, or persuade us to accept a thesis on any subject matter.” Abrams

3. History of the Essay • Since writing was invented • Classical Greece and Rome • English Essays – 16th century France (Montaigne – “the father of the modern essay) • Etymology of essayer (fr.) • Latin exagere (to weigh or sift something) • Weighing or sifting applied to a particular subject

4. Francis Bacon • Successor of Montaigne STUDIES serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business… To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar… Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation.

5. 18th Century • Influences that changed essays • Samuel Johnson • Creating the dictionary • Critical essays on Shakespeare • “Rambler’ Essay

6. ‘Rambler’ Essays • Two important aspects • Persona • Moral/Didactic speech • The ‘Rambler’ • Persona in which Johnson speaks in • Over 200 of these essays

7. On Fiction There have been men indeed splendidly wicked, whose endowments threw a brightness on their crimes, and whom scarce any villany made perfectly detestable, because they never could be wholly divested of their excellencies; but such have been in all ages the great corrupters of the world, and their resemblance ought no more to be preserved, than the art of murdering without pain…Vice, for vice is necessary to be shewn, should always disgust; nor should the graces of gaiety, or the dignity of courage, be so united with it, as to reconcile it to the mind. - Samuel Johnson

8. Periodical Essay • Shortly before Johnson’s time (beginning 18th century) • Joseph Addison/Richard Steele • Friends • Downturn of fortune • Create periodical essay • Less didactic/Less formal • Topics: fashion, social behavior, literary, philosophical • Tatler and Spectator

9. Johnson on Addison “His prose is the model of the middle style; on grave subjects, not formal, on light occasions not groveling; pure without scrupulosity, and exact without apparent elaborations; always equable, and always easy, without glowing words or pointed sentences. Addison never deviates from his track to snatch a grace; he seeks no ambitious ornaments, and tries no hazardous innovations. His page is always luminous, but never blazes in unexpected splendor.” – Samuel Johnson

10. 19th Century • Informal style • Focus becoming more personal

11. A Chapter on Ears I have no ear - Mistake me not, reader, -- nor imagine that I am by nature destitute of those exterior twin appendages, hanging ornaments, and (architecturally speaking) handsome volutes to the human capital. Better my mother had never borne me. -- I am, I think, rather delicately than copiously provided with those conduits; and I feel no disposition to envy the mule for his plenty, or the mole for her exactness, in those ingenious labyrinthine inlets -- those indispensable side-intelligencers. When therefore I say that I have no ear, you will understand me to mean -- for music. -- To say that this heart never melted at the concourse of sweet sounds, would be a foul self-libel… I even think that sentimentally I am disposed to harmony. But organically I am incapable of a tune. I have been practising "God save the King" all my life; whistling and humming of it over to myself in solitary corners; and am not yet arrived, they tell me, within many quavers of it. Yet hath the loyalty of Elia never been impeached.” - Charles Lamb

12. Lamb • Uses persona • Dialogic vs. Univocal • Ekphrasis • What is it? • The Picture of Dorian Gray

13. Old China Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handing tea to a lady from a salver — two miles off... And here the same lady, or another — for likeness is identity on tea-cups — is stepping into a little fairy boat, moored on the hither side of this calm garden river, with a dainty mincing foot…- Charles Lamb

14. Alexander Theroux • The Primary Colors: Three Essays • “Consider the vibrant blue watercolour of Childe Hassam’s exquisite “Yonkers from Palisades’ with its six or seven shimmering tints of blue…Or the saturated hues of azure and royal blue in Winslow Homer’s 1901 ‘Coral Formation’, where he allowed the deep blue washes to dry in such a way as to suggest the crystal clarity of the deep water.”

15. http://www.winslow-homer.com/Coral-Formation.jpg

16. Tattoo and Haircuthttp://www.eeweems.com/reginald_marsh/_artwork/tattoo-and-haircut-reginald-marsh.jpg

17. Styles of the 19th, 20th, and 21st Century • 19th – didactic and satirical • 20th – personal • 21st – feminist theory, eco-criticism, autobiographical, historical

18. Conventions of Literary Essay • Voice • Univocal • Dialogic • Persona • Subject • Limited

19. Conventions cont’d • Purpose • Didactic • Philosophical • Political • Daily Life • Human Behavior • Satire

20. Conventions cont’d • Tone • Personal and informal • Magisterial, authoritative, or formal • Autobiographical – brief narratives with anecdotes