An essay is a short piece of writing that discusses, describes or
analyzes one topic. It can discuss a subject directly or indirectly,
seriously or humorously. It can describe personal opinion, or just
report information. Essays are written for different purposes and for
different occasions.
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 "[l]ike the novel, the essay is a literary device for
saying almost everything about almost anything, usually on a certain
topic. By tradition, almost by definition, the essay is a short piece,
and it is therefore impossible to give all things full play within the
limits of a single essay". He points out that "a collection of essays
can cover almost as much ground, and cover it almost as thoroughly, as
can a long novel"--he gives Montaigne's Third Book as an example. Huxley
argues on several occasions that "essays belong to a literary species
whose extreme variability can be studied most effectively within a
three-poled frame of reference". Huxley's three poles are:
- Personal and the autobiographical essays: these use "fragments of
reflective autobiography" to "look at the world through the keyhole of
anecdote and description".
- Objective and factual: in these essays, the authors "do not speak
directly of themselves, but turn their attention outward to some
literary or scientific or political theme".
- Abstract-universal: these essays "make the best ... of all the three
worlds in which it is possible for the essay to exist". This type is
also known as Giraffe Style Writing.
The word
essay comes from the French infinitive word
"essayer" or 'essais" which means "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
(1533–1592) 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.
