Abstract
The Introduction addresses problems in the history of the essay, and criticism and scholarship on it. Although the essay’s origin is easy to date—Montaigne’s Essais (1580) was the first book of that title—it is notoriously difficult to define, and there is remarkably little scholarship and criticism on it. This introduction asks why, offering a prehistory in Plutarch, Seneca, miscellaneous writing, and commonplacing; examining the metaphorical range of the term ‘essay’, and various other names for the form; exploring the transformation of Montaigne’s legacy in England; surveying criticism on the essay; and exploring the contradictions in its use in pedagogy. Rather than attempting a definition, the Introduction explores how the essay resists one, exposing a sequence of contradictions which anticipate the subsequent chapters: that the essay can be institutional or amateurish; methodical or anti-methodical; artistic or scientific; detached or polemical; intimate or formal; sociable or isolated; journalistic or philosophical; poetic or novelistic.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | On Essays |
| Subtitle of host publication | Montaigne to the Present |
| Editors | Thomas Karshan, Kathryn Murphy |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| Chapter | Introduction |
| Pages | 1–CI.P64 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9780198707868 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9780198707868 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Sep 2020 |
Keywords
- Adorno
- Commonplacing
- Definitions of the essay
- Essay
- Leigh hunt
- Method
- Miscellaneity
- Montaigne
- Origins of the essay
- The novel