Essay

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Essay (disambiguation).

Essays of Michel de Montaigne

Essays are generally scholarly pieces of writing giving the author's own argument, but the
definition is vague, overlapping with those of an article, a pamphlet and a short story.
Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos,
learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. Almost
all modern essays are written in prose, but works in verse have been dubbed essays (e.g.
Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism and An Essay on Man). While brevity usually defines an
essay, voluminous works like John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and
Thomas Malthus's An Essay on the Principle of Population are counterexamples. In some
countries (e.g., the United States and Canada), essays have become a major part of formal
education. Secondary students are taught structured essay formats to improve their writing skills,
and admission essays are often used by universities in selecting applicants and, in the humanities
and social sciences, as a way of assessing the performance of students during final exams.
The concept of an "essay" has been extended to other mediums beyond writing. A film essay is a
movie that often incorporates documentary film making styles and which focuses more on the
evolution of a theme or an idea. A photographic essay is an attempt to cover a topic with a linked
series of photographs; it may or may not have an accompanying text or captions.

Contents

1 Definitions

2 History
o 2.1 Europe
o 2.2 Japan

3 As an educational tool

4 Forms and styles

o 4.1 Cause and effect
o 4.2 Classification and division
o 4.3 Compare and contrast
o 4.4 Descriptive
o 4.5 Dialectic
o 4.6 Exemplification
o 4.7 Familiar
o 4.8 History (thesis)
o 4.9 Narrative
o 4.10 Critical
o 4.11 Economics
o 4.12 Other logical structures

5 Magazine or newspaper

6 Employment

7 Non-literary types
o 7.1 Visual Arts
o 7.2 Music

o 7.3 Film
o 7.4 Photography

8 See also

9 References

10 Further reading

11 External links

Definitions

John Locke's 1690 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

An essay has been defined in a variety of ways. One definition is a "prose composition with a
focused subject of discussion" or a "long, systematic discourse".[1] It is difficult to define the
genre into which essays fall. Aldous Huxley, a leading essayist, gives guidance on the subject.[2]
He notes that "the essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything",
and adds that "by tradition, almost by definition, the essay is a short piece". Furthermore, Huxley
argues that "essays belong to a literary species whose extreme variability can be studied most
effectively within a three-poled frame of reference". These three poles (or worlds in which the
essay may exist) are:

The personal and the autobiographical: The essayists that feel most comfortable in this
pole "write fragments of reflective autobiography and look at the world through the
keyhole of anecdote and description".

The objective, the factual, and the concrete-particular: The essayists that write from this
pole "do not speak directly of themselves, but turn their attention outward to some
literary or scientific or political theme. Their art consists on setting forth, passing
judgement upon, and drawing general conclusions from the relevant data".

The abstract-universal: In this pole "we find those essayists who do their work in the
world of high abstractions", who are never personal and who seldom mention the
particular facts of experience.

Huxley adds that "the most richly satisfying essays are those which make the best not of one, not
of two, but of all the three worlds in which it is possible for the essay to exist".
The word essay derives from the French infinitive essayer, "to try" or "to attempt". In English
essay first meant "a trial" or "an attempt", and this is still an alternative meaning. The Frenchman
Michel de Montaigne (15331592) was the first author to describe his work as essays; he used
the term to characterize these as "attempts" to put his thoughts into writing, and his essays grew
out of his commonplacing.[3] Inspired in particular by the works of Plutarch, a translation of
whose Oeuvres Morales (Moral works) into French had just been published by Jacques Amyot,
Montaigne began to compose his essays in 1572; the first edition, entitled Essais, was published
in two volumes in 1580. For the rest of his life he continued revising previously published essays
and composing new ones. Francis Bacon's essays, published in book form in 1597, 1612, and
1625, were the first works in English that described themselves as essays. Ben Jonson first used
the word essayist in English in 1609, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

History
The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of
the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (January
2011)

Europe
English essayists included Robert Burton (15771641) and Sir Thomas Browne (16051682). In
France, Michel de Montaigne's three volume Essais in the mid 1500s contain over 100 examples
widely regarded as the predecessor of the modern essay. In Italy, Baldassare Castiglione wrote
about courtly manners in his essay Il libro del cortegiano. In the 17th century, the Jesuit Baltasar
Gracin wrote about the theme of wisdom.[4] During the Age of Enlightenment, essays were a
favored tool of polemicists who aimed at convincing readers of their position; they also featured
heavily in the rise of periodical literature, as seen in the works of Joseph Addison, Richard Steele
and Samuel Johnson. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Edmund Burke and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge wrote essays for the general public. The early 19th century in particular saw a

proliferation of great essayists in English William Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, Leigh Hunt and
Thomas de Quincey all penned numerous essays on diverse subjects. In the 20th century, a
number of essayists tried to explain the new movements in art and culture by using essays (e.g.,
T.S. Eliot). Whereas some essayists used essays for strident political themes, Robert Louis
Stevenson and Willa Cather wrote lighter essays. Virginia Woolf, Edmund Wilson, and Charles
du Bos wrote literary criticism essays.[4]

Japan
Main article: Zuihitsu
As with the novel, essays existed in Japan several centuries before they developed in Europe
with a genre of essays known as zuihitsu loosely connected essays and fragmented ideas.
Zuihitsu have existed since almost the beginnings of Japanese literature. Many of the most noted
early works of Japanese literature are in this genre. Notable examples include The Pillow Book
(c. 1000), by court lady Sei Shnagon, and Tsurezuregusa (1330), by particularly renowned
Japanese Buddhist monk Yoshida Kenk. Kenk described his short writings similarly to
Montaigne, referring to them as "nonsensical thoughts" written in "idle hours". Another
noteworthy difference from Europe is that women have traditionally written in Japan, though the
more formal, Chinese-influenced writings of male writers were more prized at the time.

As an educational tool

University students, like these students doing research at a university library, are often assigned
essays as a way to get them to analyse what they have read.
Main article: Free response
In countries like the United States and the United Kingdom, essays have become a major part of
a formal education in the form of free response questions. Secondary students in these countries
are taught structured essay formats to improve their writing skills, and essays are often used by

universities in these countries in selecting applicants (see admissions essay). In both secondary
and tertiary education, essays are used to judge the mastery and comprehension of material.
Students are asked to explain, comment on, or assess a topic of study in the form of an essay.
During some courses, university students will often be required to complete one or more essays
that are prepared over several weeks or months. In addition, in fields such as the humanities and
social sciences,[citation needed] mid-term and end of term examinations often require students to write
a short essay in two or three hours.
In these countries, so-called academic essays, which may also be called "papers", are usually
more formal than literary ones.[citation needed] They may still allow the presentation of the writer's
own views, but this is done in a logical and factual manner, with the use of the first person often
discouraged. Longer academic essays (often with a word limit of between 2,000 and 5,000
words)[citation needed] are often more discursive. They sometimes begin with a short summary
analysis of what has previously been written on a topic, which is often called a literature review.
[citation needed]

Longer essays may also contain an introductory page in which words and phrases from the title
are tightly defined. Most academic institutions[citation needed] will require that all substantial facts,
quotations, and other porting material used in an essay be referenced in a bibliography or works
cited page at the end of the text. This scholarly convention allows others (whether teachers or
fellow scholars) to understand the basis of the facts and quotations used to support the essay's
argument, and thereby help to evaluate to what extent the argument is supported by evidence,
and to evaluate the quality of that evidence. The academic essay tests the student's ability to
present their thoughts in an organized way and is designed to test their intellectual capabilities.
One essay guide of a US university makes the distinction between research papers and discussion
papers. The guide states that a "research paper is intended to uncover a wide variety of sources
on a given topic". As such, research papers "tend to be longer and more inclusive in their scope
and with the amount of information they deal with." While discussion papers "also include
research, ...they tend to be shorter and more selective in their approach...and more analytical and
critical". Whereas a research paper would typically quote "a wide variety of sources", a
discussion paper aims to integrate the material in a broader fashion.[5]
One of the challenges facing US universities is that in some cases, students may submit essays
which have been purchased from an essay mill (or "paper mill") as their own work. An "essay
mill" is a ghostwriting service that sells pre-written essays to university and college students.
Since plagiarism is a form of academic dishonesty or academic fraud, universities and colleges
may investigate papers suspected to be from an essay mill by using Internet plagiarism detection
software, which compares essays against a database of known mill essays and by orally testing
students on the contents of their papers.[citation needed]

Forms and styles

This section describes the different forms and styles of essay writing. These forms and styles are
used by an array of authors, including university students and professional essayists.

Cause and effect

The defining features of a "cause and effect" essay are causal chains that connect from a cause to
an effect, careful language, and chronological or emphatic order. A writer using this rhetorical
method must consider the subject, determine the purpose, consider the audience, think critically
about different causes or consequences, consider a thesis statement, arrange the parts, consider
the language, and decide on a conclusion.[6]

Classification and division

Classification is the categorization of objects into a larger whole while division is the breaking of
a larger whole into smaller parts.[7]

Compare and contrast

Compare and contrast essays are characterized by a basis for comparison, points of comparison,
and analogies. It is grouped by object (chunking) or by point (sequential). Comparison highlights
the similarities between two or more similar objects while contrasting highlights the differences
between two or more objects. When writing a compare/contrast essay, writers need to determine
their purpose, consider their audience, consider the basis and points of comparison, consider their
thesis statement, arrange and develop the comparison, and reach a conclusion. Compare and
contrast is arranged emphatically.[8]

Descriptive
Descriptive writing is characterized by sensory details, which appeal to the physical senses, and
details that appeal to a reader's emotional, physical, or intellectual sensibilities. Determining the
purpose, considering the audience, creating a dominant impression, using descriptive language,
and organizing the description are the rhetorical choices to be considered when using a
description. A description is usually arranged spatially but can also be chronological or emphatic.
The focus of a description is the scene. Description uses tools such as denotative language,
connotative language, figurative language, metaphor, and simile to arrive at a dominant
impression.[9] One university essay guide states that "descriptive writing says what happened or
what another author has discussed; it provides an account of the topic".[10] Lyric essays are an
important form of descriptive essays.

Dialectic
In the dialectic form of essay, which is commonly used in Philosophy, the writer makes a thesis
and argument, then objects to their own argument (with a counterargument), but then counters
the counterargument with a final and novel argument. This form benefits from presenting a
broader perspective while countering a possible flaw that some may present.

Exemplification

An exemplification essay is characterized by a generalization and relevant, representative, and

believable examples including anecdotes. Writers need to consider their subject, determine their
purpose, consider their audience, decide on specific examples, and arrange all the parts together
when writing an exemplification essay.[11]

Malthus' Essay on the Principle of Population

Familiar
A familiar essay is one in which the essayist speaks as if to a single reader. He speaks about both
himself and a particular subject. Anne Fadiman notes that "the genre's heyday was the early
nineteenth century," and that its greatest exponent was Charles Lamb.[12] She also suggests that
while critical essays have more brain than heart, and personal essays have more heart than brain,
familiar essays have equal measures of both.[13]

History (thesis)
A history essay, sometimes referred to as a thesis essay, will describe an argument or claim about
one or more historical events and will support that claim with evidence, arguments and
references. The text makes it clear to the reader why the argument or claim is as such.[14]

Narrative

A narrative uses tools such as flashbacks, flash-forwards, and transitions that often build to a
climax. The focus of a narrative is the plot. When creating a narrative, authors must determine
their purpose, consider their audience, establish their point of view, use dialogue, and organize
the narrative. A narrative is usually arranged chronologically.[15]

Critical
A critical essay is an argumentative piece of writing, aimed at presenting objective analysis of
the subject matter, narrowed down to a single topic. The main idea of all the criticism is to
provide an opinion either of positive or negative implication. As such, a critical essay requires
research and analysis, strong internal logic and sharp structure. Each argument should be
supported with sufficient evidence, relevant to the point.

Economics
An economic essay can start with a thesis, or it can start with a theme. It can take a narrative
course and a descriptive course. It can even become an argumentative essay if the author feels
the need. After the introduction the author has to do his/her best to expose the economic matter at
hand, to analyse it, evaluate it, and draw a conclusion. If the essay takes more of a narrative form
then the author has to expose each aspect of the economic puzzle in a way that makes it clear and
understandable for the reader

Other logical structures

The logical progression and organizational structure of an essay can take many forms.
Understanding how the movement of thought is managed through an essay has a profound
impact on its overall cogency and ability to impress. A number of alternative logical structures
for essays have been visualized as diagrams, making them easy to implement or adapt in the
construction of an argument.[16]

Magazine or newspaper
Essays often appear in magazines, especially magazines with an intellectual bent, such as The
Atlantic and Harpers. Magazine and newspaper essays use many of the essay types described in
the section on forms and styles (e.g., descriptive essays, narrative essays, etc.). Some newspapers
also print essays in the op-ed section.

An 1895 cover of Harpers, a US magazine that prints a number of essays per issue.

Employment
Employment essays detailing experience in a certain occupational field are required when
applying for some jobs, especially government jobs in the United States. Essays known as
Knowledge Skills and Executive Core Qualifications are required when applying to certain US
federal government positions.
A KSA, or "Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities," is a series of narrative statements that are required
when applying to Federal government job openings in the United States. KSAs are used along
with resumes to determine who the best applicants are when several candidates qualify for a job.
The knowledge, skills and abilities necessary for the successful performance of a position are
contained on each job vacancy announcement. KSAs are brief and focused essays about one's
career and educational background that presumably qualify one to perform the duties of the
position being applied for.
An Executive Core Qualification, or ECQ, is a narrative statement that is required when applying
to Senior Executive Service positions within the US Federal government. Like the KSAs, ECQs
are used along with resumes to determine who the best applicants are when several candidates
qualify for a job. The Office of Personnel Management has established five executive core
qualifications that all applicants seeking to enter the Senior Executive Service must demonstrate.

Non-literary types
Visual Arts

In the visual arts, an essay is a preliminary drawing or sketch upon which a final painting or
sculpture is based, made as a test of the work's composition (this meaning of the term, like
several of those following, comes from the word essay's meaning of "attempt" or "trial").

Music
In the realm of music, composer Samuel Barber wrote a set of "Essays for Orchestra," relying on
the form and content of the music to guide the listener's ear, rather than any extra-musical plot or
story.

Film
A film essay (or "cinematic essay") consists of the evolution of a theme or an idea rather than a
plot per se; or the film literally being a cinematic accompaniment to a narrator reading an essay.
From another perspective, an essay film could be defined as a documentary film visual basis
combined with a form of commentary that contains elements of self-portrait (rather than
autobiography), where the signature (rather than the life story) of the filmmaker is apparent. The
cinematic essay often blends documentary, fiction, and experimental film making using a tones
and editing styles.[17]
The genre is not well-defined but might include propaganda works of early Soviet
parliamentarians like Dziga Vertov, present-day filmmakers including Chris Marker,[18] Michael
Moore (Roger & Me (1989), Bowling for Columbine (2002) and Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)), Errol
Morris (The Thin Blue Line (1988)), Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me: A Film of Epic
Proportions) and Agns Varda. Jean-Luc Godard describes his recent work as "film-essays".[19]
Two filmmakers whose work was the antecedent to the cinematic essay include Georges Mlis
and Bertolt Brecht. Mlis made a short film (The Coronation of Edward VII (1902)) about the
1902 coronation of King Edward VII, which mixes actual footage with shots of a recreation of
the event. Brecht was a playwright who experimented with film and incorporated film
projections into some of his plays.[17] Orson Welles made an essay film in his own pioneering
style which was released in 1974 called F for Fake, which dealt specifically with art forger
Elmyr de Hory and with the themes of deception, "fakery," and authenticity in general.
David Winks Gray's article "The essay film in action" states that the "essay film became an
identifiable form of film making in the 1950s and '60s". He states that since that time, essay films
have tended to be "on the margins" of the film making world. Essay films have a "peculiar
searching, questioning tone" which is "between documentary and fiction" but without "fitting
comfortably" into either genre. Gray notes that just like written essays, essay films "tend to
marry the personal voice of a guiding narrator (often the director) with a wide swath of other
voices".[20] The University of Wisconsin Cinematheque website echoes some of Gray's
comments; it calls a film essay an "intimate and allusive" genre that "catches filmmakers in a
pensive mood, ruminating on the margins between fiction and documentary" in a manner that is
"refreshingly inventive, playful, and idiosyncratic".[21]

Photography

"After School Play Interrupted by the Catch and Release of a Stingray" is a simple time-sequence
photo essay.
A photographic essay is an attempt to cover a topic with a linked series of photographs. Photo
essays range from purely photographic works to photographs with captions or small notes to full
text essays with a few or many accompanying photographs. Photo essays can be sequential in
nature, intended to be viewed in a particular order, or they may consist of non-ordered
photographs which may be viewed all at once or in an order chosen by the viewer. All photo
essays are collections of photographs, but not all collections of photographs are photo essays.
Photo essays often address a certain issue or attempt to capture the character of places and
events.

See also

Abstract (summary)

Admissions essay

Body (writing)

Book report

Thesis

Essay thesis

Five paragraph essay

Introduction

List of essayists

Plagiarism

SAT Essay

Schaffer paragraph

Treatise

Writing

References
1.

Gale Free Resources Glossary DE. Gale.cengage.com. Retrieved March 23,

2011.

2.

Aldous Huxley, Collected Essays, "Preface".

3.

"Book Use Book Theory: 15001700: Commonplace Thinking".

Lib.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 2013-08-10.

4.

essay (literature) Britannica Online Encyclopedia. Britannica.com. Retrieved

March 22, 2011.

5.

Sections 3.1 through 3.3. of the Simon Fraser University CNS essay handbook.

6.

Chapter 7: Cause and Effect in Glenn, Cheryl. Making Sense: A Real World
Rhetorical Reader. Ed. Denise B. Wydra, et al. Second ed. Boston, MA: Bedford/St.
Martin's, 2005.

7.

Chapter 5: Classification and Division in Glenn, Cheryl. Making Sense: A Real

World Rhetorical Reader. Ed. Denise B. Wydra, et al. Second ed. Boston, MA:
Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005.

8.

Chapter 6: Comparison and Contrast in Glenn, Cheryl. Making Sense: A Real

World Rhetorical Reader. Ed. Denise B. Wydra, et al. Second ed. Boston, MA:
Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005.

9.

Chapter 2: Description in Glenn, Cheryl. Making Sense: A Real World Rhetorical

Reader. Ed. Denise B. Wydra, et al. Second ed. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005.

10.

Section 2.1 of the Simon Fraser University CNS Essay Handbook. Available
online at: sfu.ca

11.

Chapter 4: Exemplification in Glenn, Cheryl. Making Sense: A Real World

Rhetorical Reader. Ed. Denise B. Wydra, et al. Second ed. Boston, MA: Bedford/St.
Martin's, 2005.

12.

Fadiman, Anne. At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays. p. x.

13.

Fadiman, At Large and At Small, xi.

14.

History Essay Format & Thesis Statement, (February 2010)

15.

Chapter 3 Narration in Glenn, Cheryl. Making Sense: A Real World Rhetorical

Reader. Ed. Denise B. Wydra, et al. Second ed. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005.

16.

"'Mission Possible' by Dr. Mario Petrucci" (PDF). Retrieved 2014-10-25.

17.

Cinematic Essay Film Genre. chicagomediaworks.com. Retrieved March 22,

2011.

18.

(registration required) Lim, Dennis (July 31, 2012). "Chris Marker, 91, Pioneer of

the Essay Film". The New York Times. Retrieved July 31, 2012.
19.

Discussion of film essays. Chicago Media Works.

20.

[dead link]

21.

[1]. San Francisco Film Society.

"Talking Pictures: The Art of the Essay Film". Cinema.wisc.edu. Retrieved March
22, 2011.

Further reading

Theodor W. Adorno, "The Essay as Form" in: Theodor W. Adorno, The Adorno Reader,
Blackwell Publishers 2000.

Beaujour, Michel. Miroirs d'encre: Rh