Montaigne called it a ramble; Chesterton the joke of literature; and Hume an ambassador between the worlds of learning and of conversation. But what is an essay, and how did it emerge as a literary form? What are the continuities and contradictions across its history, from Montaigne's 1580 Essais through the familiar intimacies of the Romantic essay, and up to more recent essayists such as Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, and Claudia Rankine?Sometimes called the fourth genre, the essay has been over-shadowed in literary history by fiction, poetry, and drama, and has proved notoriously resistant to definition. On Essays reveals in the essay a pattern of paradox: at once a pedagogical tool and a refusal of the methodical languages of universities and professions; politically engaged but retired and independent; erudite and anti-pedantic; occasional and enduring; intimate and oratorical; allusive and idiosyncratic. Perhaps because it is a form of writing against which literary scholarship has defined itself, there has been surprisingly little work on the tradition of the essay. Neither a comprehensive history nor a student companion, On Essays is a series of seventeen elegantly written essays on authors and aspects in the history of the genre - essays which, taken together, form the most substantial book yet published on the essay in Britain and America.
Write a Review
Write a Review
On Essays 9780192848611 Paperback
There are no reviews for this product yet - be the first
- Year Published:
- 2021
- Country of Publication:
- United Kingdom
- Format:
- Paperback
- Editors:
- Karshan, Thomas (Senior Lecturer in Literature, University of East Anglia)|Murphy, Kathryn (Fellow and Tutor in English Literature, Oriel College, and Associate Professor, English Faculty, University of Oxford)
- ISBN:
- 9780192848611
- Number of Pages:
- 400
- Publication Date:
- 01/09/2021
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- Place of Publication:
- Oxford
- Language:
- English
- SKU:
- 9780192848611