May 2023, ESSAYS

What is an Essay?
Well, beyond a jumble of words usually around 2,000 words or so - what is an essay, exactly? Whether you’re taking English, sociology, history, biology, art, or a speech class, it’s likely you’ll have to write an essay or two. So how is an essay different than a research paper or a review? Let’s find out!

The essay is a written piece that is designed to present an idea, propose an argument, express the emotion or initiate debate. It is a tool that is used to present writer’s ideas in a non-fictional way. Multiple applications of this type of writing go way beyond, providing political manifestos and art criticism as well as personal observations and reflections of the author.

An essay can be as short as 500 words, it can also be 5000 words or more. However, most essays fall somewhere around 1000 to 3000 words; this word range provides the writer enough space to thoroughly develop an argument and work to convince the reader of the author’s perspective regarding a particular issue. The topics of essays are boundless: they can range from the best form of government to the benefits of eating peppermint leaves daily.

Origins of the Essay
Over the course of more than six centuries essays were used to question assumptions, argue trivial opinions and to initiate global discussions. Let’s have a closer look into historical progress and various applications of this literary phenomenon to find out exactly what it is. Today’s modern word “essay” can trace its roots back to the French “essayer” which translates closely to mean “to attempt.” This is an apt name for this writing form because the essay’s ultimate purpose is to attempt to convince the audience of something. An essay’s topic can range broadly.

The essay comes in many shapes and sizes; it can focus on a personal experience or a purely academic exploration of a topic. Essays are classified as a subjective writing form because while they include expository elements, they can rely on personal narratives to support the writer’s viewpoint. The essay genre includes a diverse array of academic writings ranging from literary criticism to meditations on the natural world. Most typically, the essay exists as a shorter writing form; essays are rarely the length of a novel.

The Essay in Literature
The essay enjoys a long and renowned history in literature. They first began gaining in popularity in the early 16th century, and their popularity has continued today both with original writers and ghost writers. Many readers prefer this short form in which the writer seems to speak directly to the reader, presenting a particular claim and working to defend it through a variety of means. Not sure if you’ve ever read a great essay? You wouldn’t believe how many pieces of literature are actually nothing less than essays, or evolved into more complex structures from the essay.

[Source: https://handmadewriting.com/blog/guides/what-is-an-essay/]

In May Barb will be our host, and we will explore this form of literature by examining some classic and yet-to-be classic essays including:

01. Atwood, Margaret: The Female Body [1990]
02. Baldwin, James: A Letter to my Nephew [1962]
03. Baldwin, James: Notes of a Native Son [1955]
04. Beard, Jo Ann: The Fourth State of Matter [1996] [Possibly disturbing]
05. Didion, Joan: The Women's Movement [1972]
06. Ebert, Roger: Go Gentle into that Good Night [2009]
07. Emerson, Ralph Waldo: Self-Reliance [1841]
08. Faulkner, William: Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech [1950]
09. Gay, Roxane: Bad Feminist [2012]
10. Gay, Roxane: What we Hunger for [2012] [Possibly disturbing]
11. Gopnik, Adam: The Caging of America [2012]
12. Hazlitt, William: On the Conversation of Authors [1820]
13. Hitchens, Christopher: Assassins of the Mind [2009]
14. Klosterman, Chuck: Death by Harry Potter [2007]
15. Larkin, Philip: The Pleasure Principle [1983]
16. MacWhorter, John: English is not normal [2015]
17. McKenna, Terence: Tryptamine Hallucinogens and Consciousness [1982]
18. Orwell, George: Shooting an Elephant [1936]
19. Orwell, George: Politics and the English Language [1946]
20. Sacks, Oliver: On Libraries [2014]
21. Sagan, Carl: Does Truth Matter? [1996]
22. Sedaris, David: Laugh, Kookaburra [2009]
23. Sedaris, David: Undecided [2008]
24. Smith, Zadie: Fail Better [2007]
25. Vonnegut, Kurt: Dispatch from a Man without a Country [2005]
26. Wallace, David Foster: The Nature of the Fun: Why Writers Write [1998]
27. Welty, Eudora: The Little Store [1978]
28. Woolf, Virginia: How does one read a book? [1926]
29. Swift, Jonathan: A Modest Proposal [1729]

You can access all of these essays via the message board link below.

May 2023, Essays Online URL list - 100 Classics Book Club (Sherwood Park, AB) | Meetup