Essay

An essay is a piece of writing, usually from an author's personal point of view. Essays are non-fiction but often subjective; while expository, they can also include narrative. Essays can be literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author.The definition of an essay is vague, overlapping with those of an article and a short story. 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 provide counterexamples.The word essay derives from the French infinitive essayer, 'to try' or 'to attempt'. The first author to describe his works as essays was the Frenchman Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592). 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.
Notable essayists are legion. They include G.K. Chesterton, Virginia Woolf, Voltaire, Adrienne Rich, Alamgir Hashmi, Joan Didion, Jean Baudrillard, Benjamin Disraeli, Susan Sontag, Natalia Ginzburg, Sara Suleri, Annie Dillard, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, Charles Lamb, Leo Tolstoy, William Hazlitt, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, Walter Bagehot, Maurice Maeterlinck, George Orwell, George Bernard Shaw, John D'Agata, Reynolds Price, Gore Vidal, Marguerite Yourcenar, J.M. Coetzee, Gaston Waringhien and E.B. White.

It is very difficult to define the genre into which essays fall.

The following remarks by Aldous Huxley, a leading essayist, may help:

"Like the novel, the essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything. 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. But a collection of essays can cover almost as much ground, and cover it almost as thoroughly, as can a long novel. Montaigne's Third Book is the equivalent, very nearly, of a good slice of the Comédie Humaine. Essays belong to a literary species whose extreme variability can be studied most effectively within a three-poled frame of reference. There is the pole of the personal and the autobiographical; there is the pole of the objective, the factual, the concrete-particular; and there is the pole of the abstract-universal. Most essayists are at home and at their best in the neighborhood of only one of the essay's three poles, or at the most only in the neighborhood of two of them. There are the predominantly personal essayists, who write fragments of reflective autobiography and who look at the world through the keyhole of anecdote and description. There are the predominantly objective essayists who do not speak directly of themselves, but turn their attention outward to some literary or scientific or political theme. … And how splendid, how truly oracular are the utterances of the great generalizers! … 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" (Collected Essays, "Preface").

The essay as a pedagogical tool

In recent times, essays have become a major part of a formal education. Secondary students are taught structured essay formats to improve their writing skills, and essays are often used by universities 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.

Academic essays are usually more formal than literary ones. 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.

The five-paragraph essay

Main article: Five paragraph essay

Many students' first exposure to the genre is the five paragraph essay, a highly structured form requiring an introduction presenting the thesis statement; three body paragraphs, each of which presents an idea to support the thesis together with supporting evidence and quotations; and a conclusion, which restates the thesis and summarizes the supporting points. The use of this format is controversial. Proponents argue that it teaches students how to organize their thoughts clearly in writing; opponents characterize its structure as rigid and repetitive.

Academic essays

Longer academic essays (often with a word limit of between 2,000 to 5,000 words) 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. Longer essays may also contain an introductory page in which words and phrases from the title are tightly defined. Most academic institutions will require that all substantial facts, quotations, and other supporting 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 tests their intellectual capabilities.

Some types of essays are:

Descriptive essays
The aim of descriptive essays is to provide a vivid picture of a person, location, object, event, or debate. It will offer details that will enable the reader to imagine the item described.

Definitive essays

The aim of a definition essay is to describe what a particular term means using facts, terms and anecdotes that a reader will understand.
Narrative essays

The aim of a narrative essay is to describe a course of events from a subjective vantage point, and may be written in first-person present or first person past tense. Though not always chronological, narrative essays do follow the development of a person through a series of experiences and reflections. The focus of the essay is often to more clearly identify the point of view of the narrator, and to express common features of subjectivity.

Compare and contrast essays

The aim of a compare and contrast essay is to develop the relationship between two or more things. Generally, the goal is to show that superficial differences or similarities are inadequate, and that closer examination reveals their unobvious, yet significant, relations or differences.

Persuasive essays

In a persuasive essay, the writer tries to persuade the reader to accept an idea or agree with an opinion. The writer's purpose is to convince the reader that her or his point of view is a reasonable one. The persuasive essay should be written in a style that grabs and holds the reader's attention, and the writer's opinion should be backed up by strong supporting details.

Argumentative essays

Argumentative essays are most often used to address controversial issues - i.e. serious issue over which there is some evident disagreement. An argument is a position combined with its supporting reasons. Argumentative papers thus set out a main claim and then provide reasons for thinking that the claim is true. Acknowledging opposing views and either refuting them or conceding to them is a common practice in this form of essay.

Reflective essays
This deals with topics of abstract nature, as habits, and ambitions. Social, political, philosophical and religious subjects also come under this head.

Dialectic essays

In this form of essay used commonly in Philosophy, one 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 being more open-minded while countering a possible flaw that some may present.
Imitation

Essays in which the writer pulls out the main thesis and outline of a particular paper, and then writes an essay in his or her own style.
Non-literary essays

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
Film essays are cinematic forms of the essay, with the film consisting 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. The genre is not well-defined but might include works of early Soviet documentarians like Dziga Vertov, or present-day filmmakers like Michael Moore or Errol Morris.
Jean-Luc Godard describes his recent work as "film-essays" (discussion of film essays)

Photography

A photographic essay is an attempt to cover a topic with a linked series of photographs.
Words are collections of sounds; sentences are collections of words; paragraphs are collections of sentences; and essays are collections of paragraphs. But so are many other forms of writing such as that found in novels, magazines, and newspapers. So what are the essential differences between the essay and other types of writing?
The essay is, first and foremost, essentially true, a piece of non-fiction. As soon as authors begin making up characters, adding details that really didn't occur, or fabricating a plot structure in order to make what they are writing larger than real life, they are writing in a fictional mode. In other words, essays may be descriptive, use narration, propose solutions to problems, elucidate the inner workings of complicated creations of nature and/or humanity, but one thing they aren't is fake or false or made up or fabricated. Essays may be creative in the sense that the authors have creatively explained their points of view, but essays aren't creative.

Secondly, all essays have definable beginnings, middles, and endings, unlike some forms of writing such as newspaper stories. In addition, essays are built around central ideas, normally referred to as theses. Elsewhere in this Online Writing Lab, the thesis statement is discussed, so there will be no great elaboration of that essential ingredient here. Basically, the thesis is the glue which binds the essay together. It is the point of the essay. It's what the essay is about, what it intends to show, prove, or do: the controlling purpose.

Finally, essays consist of one, three, or more paragraphs. While a two paragraph essay may be possible to write, the requirement that essays have introductions, bodies, and conclusions makes the use of a two-paragraph format rather awkward. And the one paragraph essay, consisting of a topic sentence, supporting details, and a closing sentence, is too brief to be considered a serious effort in terms of narrating, describing, explaining, or arguing a point of view. Realistically, that leaves us with three paragraphs or more. But length should never be a primary consideration when creating an essay. More germane is the idea that the essay should be long enough to completely discuss, argue, prove, or relate the main idea of the essay, the thesis. The well-written essay has a completeness, a wholeness about it that announces, "There's nothing more to be said."
The primary job of the essay, then, is to thoroughly discuss its main idea(s). In addition, three or more paragraphs are normally required to adequately perform this important function, even though under certain circumstances the one-paragraph essay is acceptable. In other areas of this OWL, typical one-paragraph, three-paragraph, five-paragraph, and longer essays will be displayed.
"Start writing, no matter about what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on. You can sit and look at a page for a long time and nothing will happen. Start writing and it will." -- Louis L'Amour

essay
noun
1. A relatively brief discourse written especially as an exercise: composition, paper, theme. See words.
2. A procedure that ascertains effectiveness, value, proper function, or other quality: assay, proof, test, trial, tryout. See investigate.
3. A trying to do or make something: attempt, crack, effort, endeavor, go, offer, stab, trial, try. Informal shot. Slang take. Archaic assay. See try.
verb
1. To make an attempt to do or make: assay, attempt, endeavor, seek, strive, try. Idioms: have a go at, havemaketakea shot at, havetakea whack at, make a stab at, take a crack at. See try.
2. To subject to a procedure that ascertains effectiveness, value, proper function, or other quality: assay, check, examine, prove, test, try, try out. Idioms: bring to the test, make trial of, put to theprooftest. See investigate.

Antonyms: essay

n
Definition: try, attempt
Antonyms: idleness, pass

v
Definition: try, attempt
Antonyms: be idle, forget, neglect, pass
essay, a short written composition in prose that discusses a subject or proposes an argument without claiming to be a complete or thorough exposition. A minor literary form, the essay is more relaxed than the formal academic dissertation. The term (‘trying out’) was coined by the French writer Michel de Montaigne in the title of his Essais (1580), the first modern example of the form. Francis Bacon's Essays (1597) began the tradition of essays in English, of which important examples are those of Addison, Steele, Hazlitt, Emerson, D. H. Lawrence, and Virginia Woolf. The verse essays of Pope are rare exceptions to the prose norm.
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: essay

Analytic, interpretative, or critical literary composition, usually dealing with its subject from a limited and often personal point of view. Flexible and versatile, the essay was perfected by Michel de Montaigne, who chose the name essai to emphasize that his compositions were "attempts" to express his thoughts and experiences. The essay has been the vehicle of literary and social criticism for some, while for others it could serve semipolitical, nationalistic, or polemical purposes and could have a detached, playful, earnest, or bitter tone.

German Literature Companion: Essay

Essay, a term of French and English origin (Montaigne, 1580, Bacon, 1597), was first applied to German essays by Hermann Grimm (Essays, 4 vols., 1859-90), supplementing German terms such as ‘Versuch’, ‘Entwurf’, ‘Fragment’, ‘Abhandlung’, and ‘Aufsatz’, all of which had been employed since the mid-18th c. (e.g. by Winckelmann, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, F. Schlegel, Novalis, A. von Humboldt). ‘Essayistik’, the art of critical essay writing with its often frankly subjective bias, has been cultivated since Grimm by a great number of outstanding men of letters (e.g. P. Ernst, R. Kaßner, H. and Th. Mann, G. Lukács

Columbia Encyclopedia: essay,

relatively short literary composition in prose, in which a writer discusses a topic, usually restricted in scope, or tries to persuade the reader to accept a particular point of view. Although such classical authors as Theophrastus, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, and Plutarch wrote essays, the term essai was first applied to the form in 1580 by Montaigne, one of the greatest essayists of all time, to his pieces on friendship, love, death, and morality. In England the term was inaugurated in 1597 by Francis Bacon, who wrote shrewd meditations on civil and moral wisdom. Montaigne and Bacon, in fact, illustrate the two distinct kinds of essay—the informal and the formal. The informal essay is personal, intimate, relaxed, conversational, and frequently humorous. Some of the greatest exponents of the informal essay are Jonathan Swift, Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, Thomas De Quincey, Mark Twain, James Thurber, and E. B. White. The formal essay is dogmatic, impersonal, systematic, and expository. Significant writers of this type include Joseph Addison, Samuel Johnson, Matthew Arnold, John Stuart Mill, J. H. Newman, Walter Pater, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. In the latter half of the 20th cent. the formal essay has become more diversified in subject and less stately in tone and language, and the sharp division between the two forms has tended to disappear.

Bibliography
Word Tutor: essay


IN BRIEF: A short piece of writing on some subject, giving the writer's personal ideas.

Grammar Dictionary: essay
A short piece of writing on one subject, usually presenting the author's own views. Michel de Montaigne, Francis Bacon, and Ralph Waldo Emerson are celebrated for their essays.