An essay is, in general, an article which gives the author's own argument - but the definition is vague, overlapping with papers, articles, pamphlets, and short stories. Essays have traditionally been classified as formal and informal. Formal essays are characterized by "serious purpose, dignity, logical organization, length," while informal essays are characterized by "personal elements (self-enlightenment, taste and individual experience, secret ways), humor, elegant style, rambling, unconventional or novelty themes, "etc.
Essays are usually used as literary criticisms, political manifestos, learned arguments, daily life observations, memories, and reflections from the author. Almost all modern essays are written in prose form, but the work in the verse has been dubbed the essay (eg, Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism and An Essay on Man). While clarity usually defines an essay, productive works like John Locke's Essay on Human Understanding and Thomas Malthus The Essay on the Population Principle is unmatchable. In some countries (eg, the United States and Canada), essays have become a major part of formal education. High school students are taught structured essay format to improve their writing skills; Acceptance essays are often used by universities in selecting applicants, and in science essays and social sciences are often used as a way of assessing student performance during the final exam.
The concept of "essay" has been extended to other mediums beyond writing. Film essays are films that often combine documentary-making styles and focus more on the evolution of a theme or idea. Photographic essays cover topics with a series of related photos that may have accompanying texts or texts.
Video Essay
Definition
Essays have been defined in various ways. One definition is "the composition of prose with the subject of focused discussion" or "long and systematic discourse". It is difficult to define the genre to which the essay falls. Aldous Huxley, the leading scholar, gives guidance on this. He notes that "essays are literary tools for saying almost everything about almost anything", and add that "by tradition, almost by definition, essays are short sections". Furthermore, Huxley argues that "essays belonging to a literary species of extreme variability can be studied most effectively in a three-polar reference frame". The three poles (or the world in which the essay may exist) are:
- Personal and autobiography: The most comfortable feelers at this pole "write pieces of reflective autobiography and see the world through anecdotal keyhole and description".
- Purpose, factual, and specific concrete: The essays writing from this pole "do not speak directly about themselves, but turn their attention out to some literary or scientific or political theme.Their art consists of setting, , and draw the general conclusions from relevant data ".
- Abstract-universal: At this pole "we find an essay performing their work in a world of high abstraction," which is never personal and seldom mentions certain factual experiences.
Huxley adds that the most satisfying essay "... makes the best not of one, not two, but of all three worlds where it is possible for an essay to exist."
The word essay comes from the infinitive French essay , "to try" or "try". In English essay first means "experiment" or "experiment", and this is still an alternative meaning. The Frenchman Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) was the first author to describe his work as an essay; he uses that term to characterize this as an "attempt" to put his mind into writing, and his essay grows from its general place. Inspired particularly by the works of Plutarch, the translation of OEuvres Morales into Morocco has just been published by Jacques Amyot, Montaigne began writing his essay in 1572; the first edition, titled Essais , was published in two volumes in 1580. For the rest of his life, he continued to revise previously published essays and compose new ones. The essay of Francis Bacon, published in book form in 1597, 1612, and 1625, were the first works in English that describe themselves as an essay . Ben Jonson first used the word essay in English in 1609, according to the Oxford English Dictionary .
Maps Essay
History
Europe
English essays include Robert Burton (1577-1641) and Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682). In France, the three volumes of Michel de Montaigne Essais in the mid-1500s contained more than 100 examples that are widely regarded as the predecessors of modern essays. In Italy, Baldassare Castiglione wrote of courtesy in his essay Il Cortigiano . In the 17th century, Jesuit Baltasar GraciÃÆ'¡n wrote about the theme of wisdom. During the Age of Enlightenment, essays are a favorable polemic tool aimed at convincing the reader of their position; they are also widely featured in the periodical literature, as seen in the works of Joseph Addison, Richard Steele and Samuel Johnson. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Edmund Burke and Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote essays for the general public. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, in particular, saw the proliferation of great men in English - William Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, Leigh Hunt, and Thomas de Quincey, all of whom wrote many essays on various subjects. In the 20th century, some essays tried to explain new movements in art and culture using essays (eg, T.S. Eliot). While some essayists use essays for political themes to shrill, Robert Louis Stevenson and Willa Cather write lighter essays. Virginia Woolf, Edmund Wilson, and Charles du Bos wrote essays of literary criticism.
Japanese
Like novels, essays existed in Japan several centuries before they flourished in Europe with a genre of essays known as zuihitsu - loosely connected essays and fragmented ideas. Zuihitsu has existed since the beginning of Japanese literature. Many of the most famous works of early Japanese literature exist in this genre. Important examples include The Pillow Book (c 1000), by Sei ShÃ… nagon court lady, and Tsurezuregusa (1330), by the famous Japanese Buddhist monk Yoshida Kenk. Kenk? describes his short writings similar to Montaigne, referring to them as "unreasonable thinking" written in "empty hours". Another noteworthy difference from Europe is that women are traditionally written in Japan, although the writings of more formal and influenced Chinese male writers are more valuable at the time.
Forms and styles
This section describes the various forms and styles of essay writing. This form and style is used by various authors, including students and professionals.
Causes and effects
The defining features of the essay "cause and effect" are the causal chains that connect from a cause to an effect, a careful language, and a chronological or empathetic sequence. A writer using this rhetorical method should consider the subject, set goals, consider the audience, think critically about different causes or consequences, consider thesis statements, organize the parts, consider the language, and decide a conclusion.
Classification and subdivision
Classification is the categorization of objects into a larger whole while division is the breakdown of the larger whole into smaller parts.
Compare and contrast
Compare and contrast essays are characterized by the basis of comparison, point of comparison, and analogy. These are grouped by objects (chunking) or by dots (in sequence). This comparison highlights the similarity between two or more similar objects while the contrast highlights the differences between two or more objects. When writing comparative/contrasting essays, the authors need to define their aims, consider their audience, consider base and comparison points, consider their thesis statements, develop and develop comparisons, and reach conclusions. Compare and contrast is set firmly.
Descriptive
Descriptive writing is characterized by sensory details, which appeal to the physical senses, and details that appeal to the emotional, physical, or intellectual sensitivity of the reader. Determining goals, considering the audience, creating a dominant impression, using descriptive language, and arranging descriptions are rhetorical choices to consider when using descriptions. A description is usually arranged spatially but can also be chronological or assertive. The focus of the description is the scenery. Descriptions use tools such as denotative language, connotative language, figurative language, metaphors, and similes to arrive at a dominant impression. One of the university essay guides states that "descriptive writing tells what happened or what other authors have been talking about; it gives an explanation of the topic". Essay writing is an important form of descriptive essay.
Dialectic
In the dialect form of the essay, which is usually used in philosophy, the authors make theses and arguments, then object to their own arguments (with a counter argument), but then counter the counter arguments with final and novel arguments. This form is useful from presenting broader perspectives while fighting the possible defects that some may have. This type is sometimes referred to as ethical paper .
Exemplification
An example essay is characterized by generalizations and examples that are relevant, representative, and reliable including anecdotes. Authors need to consider their subject, set their goals, consider their audience, decide on specific examples, and organize all parts together when writing sample essays.
Familiar
An essay writes an intimate essay when speaking to a single reader, writes about themselves, and about a particular subject. Anne Fadiman notes that "the heyday of the genre was the beginning of the nineteenth century," and that its greatest exponent was Charles Lamb. He also pointed out that while critical essays have more brains than hearts, and personal essays have more heart than brains, essays are known to have the same size for both.
History (thesis)
A history essay sometimes referred to as a thesis essay describes arguments or claims about one or more historical events and supports claims with evidence, arguments, and references. The text explains to the reader why the argument or claim is so.
Narration
Narration uses tools such as flashback, flash-forward, and transitions that often build to climax. Narrative focus is the plot. When creating narratives, writers must define their goals, consider their audience, establish their point of view, use dialogue, and organize narratives. Narratives are usually arranged chronologically.
Argumentative
The argumentative essay is an important part of writing, which aims to present an objective analysis of the subject matter, narrowed down to a single topic. The main idea of ​​all criticism is to give an opinion of positive or negative implications. Thus, critical essays require research and analysis, strong internal logic and sharp structures. The structure is usually built around an introduction with topic relevance and thesis statements, body paragraphs with arguments linking back to the main thesis, and conclusions. In addition, argumentative essays can include a section of rebuttal in which conflicting ideas are recognized, explained, and criticized. Each argumentative argument argument must be supported with sufficient evidence, relevant to the point.
Economy
The economic essay can begin with a thesis, or it can start with a theme. It can take narrative courses and descriptive courses. It can even be an argumentative essay if the author feels the need. After the introduction, the author should do his best to expose the economic problem at hand, analyze it, evaluate it, and draw conclusions. If the essay takes on more narrative forms then the writer should expose every aspect of the economic puzzle in a way that makes it clear and understandable to the reader
Reflective
A reflective essay is an analytical part of writing where the author describes real or imaginary scenes, events, interactions, passing thoughts, memories, or forms - adding personal reflection to the meaning of the topic in the author's life. So, the focus is not just descriptive. The authors not only describe the situation, but review the scene with more detail and emotion to check what is going well, or reveal the need for additional learning - and be able to relate what is going on with the rest of the author's life.
Other logical structures
The logical development and organizational structure of the essay can take many forms. Understanding how thought movements are managed through an essay has a huge impact on convincing power and its ability to impress. A number of alternative logical structures for the essay have been visualized as diagrams, making them easy to implement or adapt in the construction of an argument.
Academic
In countries such as the United States and Britain, essays have become a major part of formal education in the form of free response questions. High school students in these countries are taught structured essay format to improve their writing skills, and essays are often used by universities in these countries in selecting applicants ( see admission essay). In both secondary and higher education, essays are used to assess mastery and material understanding. Students are asked to explain, comment on, or assess the topic of learning in the form of an essay. In some programs, students must complete one or more essays for several weeks or months. In addition, in areas such as humanities and social sciences, middle and late-term exams often require students to write short essays in two or three hours.
In these countries, so-called academic essays are also called papers, usually more formal than papers. They may still allow the presentation of the author's own views, but this is done in a logical and factual way, with the use of the first person who is often discouraged. Longer academic essays (often with a word limit of between 2,000 and 5,000 words) are often more discursive. Sometimes they start with a brief summary analysis of what has previously been written about a topic, often referred to as literature review.
Longer essays may also contain introductory pages that define words and phrases from essay topics. Most academic institutions require that all facts, quotations, and other supporting material in the essay be referred to in the bibliography or pages quoted at the end of the text. This scientific convention helps others (either teachers or fellow scholars) to understand the factual basis and quotes the author uses to support the essay argument and help the reader evaluate the extent to which arguments are supported by evidence, and to evaluate the quality of the evidence.. Academic essays test students' ability to present their thoughts in an organized way designed to test their intellectual abilities.
One of the challenges facing the university is that in some cases, students may submit essays purchased from an essay factory (or "paper mill") as their own. An "essay mill" is a ghostwriting service that sells pre-written essays to universities and college students. Since plagiarism is a form of academic dishonesty or academic fraud, universities and colleges can investigate papers that they presume derive from an essay factory using plagiarism detection software, which compares essays to known factory essay databases and by orally examining students about their paper contents.
Magazines or newspapers
Essays often appear in magazines, especially magazines with intellectual propensity, such as The Atlantic and Harpers . Magazine and newspaper essays use many types of essays described in the section on shapes and styles (eg, descriptive essays, narrative essays, etc.). Some newspapers also print essays in the open.
Jobs
A work essay detailing experience in a particular field of work is required when applying for some work, especially government jobs in the United States. Essays known as Knowledge Skills and Executive Core Qualifications are required when applying to certain US federal government positions.
KSA, or "Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities," is a series of narrative statements required when applying to Federal government jobs in the United States. KSA is used in conjunction with a resume to determine who the best applicant is when multiple candidates qualify for a job. The knowledge, skills and abilities necessary for a successful performance of a position are present in every job announcement. KSAs are brief and focused essays about one's career and educational background that may qualify one to perform the task of the position being applied.
The Core Executive Qualification, or ECQ, is the narrative statement required when applying to Senior Executive Service positions within the US Federal government. Like KSA, ECQ is used in conjunction with resumes to determine who is the best applicant when multiple candidates qualify for a job. The Office of Personnel Management has set five core executive qualifications that must be demonstrated by all applicants wishing to enter Senior Executive Services.
Non-literary type
Movies
A film essay (or "cinematic essay") consists of the evolution of a theme or idea rather than a plot per se, or a film that literally becomes a cinematic accompaniment to a narrator who reads the essay. From another perspective, an essay film can be defined as the basis of a visual documentary film combined with a self-portrait (not autobiographical) form of commentary, in which the signature (not the life story) of the filmmaker is clear. The cinematic essays often incorporate documentary, fiction, and experimental filmmaking using tone and editing styles.
This genre is not well-defined but may include propaganda works from early Soviet MPs such as Dziga Vertov, today's filmmakers including Chris Marker, Michael Moore ( Roger & Me (1989), < i> Bowling for Columbine (2002) and Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)), Errol Morris ( Thin Blue Line (1988)), Morgan Spurlock ( Supersize Me: A Movie of Epic Portions ) and AgnÃÆ'¨s Varda. Jean-Luc Godard describes his latest work as "film-essay". Two filmmakers whose work is antecedents for cinematic essays include Georges MÃÆ'Ã… © liÃÆ'¨s and Bertolt Brecht. MÃÆ'Â Â © liÃÆ'¨s made a short film ( Coronation of Edward VII (1902)) about the coronation of 1902 King Edward VII, which mixed the actual recording with the shooting of the event's recreation. Brecht is a playwright who experimented with films and incorporated film projections into several dramas. Orson Welles made his own pioneering essay film, released in 1974, entitled F for Fake , which specifically discusses the Elmyr de Hory artificial artist and with the theme of fraud, "forgery," and authenticity. generally. These are often published online in video hosting services.
David Winks Gray's article "The film essay in action" states that "the film essays became an identifiable film form in the 1950s and 60s". He stated that since then, the essay films tend to be "on the sidelines" of world filmmaking. The essay films have a "strange search, question tone... between documentary and fiction" but without "snug fit" into the good genre. The same gray note as written essays, essay films "tend to marry the personal voice of a guiding narrator (often director) with many other voices". The website of the University of Wisconsin Cinematheque echoes some of Gray's comments; he calls the film essay an "intimate and easy-to-talk" genre that attracts filmmakers in a pensive mood, pondering the margins between fiction and documentary "in a way that" invigorates inventive, playful, and idiosyncratic. "
Music
In the music world, composer Samuel Barber wrote a set of "Essay for the Orchestra," relying on the form and content of music to guide the ear of the listener, rather than a plot or extra-music story.
Photography
The photography essay seeks to cover topics with a series of connected photos. Photo essays range from pure photographic work to photos with text or small notes to a full text essay with some or many accompanying photos. Photo essays can be sequential, intended to be viewed in a particular order - or may consist of unordered photographs viewed all at once or in a sequence chosen by the viewer. All photo essays are photo collections, but not all photo collections are photo essays. Photo essays often address specific issues or try to capture the characters of places and events.
Visual art
In the visual arts, essays are the earliest drawings or sketches that form the basis for the last painting or sculpture, made as a test of the composition of the work (the meaning of this term, as some of the following, is derived from the word the meaning of esayJA about "experiment" or "trial").
See also
References
Further reading
- Theodor W. Adorno, "The Essay as Form" at: Theodor W. Adorno, Adorno Readers , Blackwell Publishers 2000.
- Beaujour, Michel. Miroirs d'encre: RhÃÆ'Â © torique de l'autoportrait "Paris: Seuil, 1980. [Poetic Portrait of Literature of the Trans. Yara Milos New York: NYU Press, 1991].
- BensmaÃÆ'¯a, Reda. The Barthes Effect: The Essay as a Reflective Text . Trans. Pat Fedkiew. Minneapolis: Univ. from Minnesota Press, 1987.
- D'Agata, John (Editor), The Lost Origins of the Essay . St. Paul: Graywolf Press, 2009.
- Giamatti, Louis. "The Cinematic Essay", in Godard and the Others: Essays in Cinematic Form . London, Tantivy Press, 1975.
- Lopate, Phillip. "In Centaur Search: The Essay-Film", in Beyond Document: Essays on Nonfiction Movies . Edited by Charles Warren, Wesleyan University Press, 1998. pp.Ã, 243-270.
- Warburton, Nigel. Basics of essay writing . Routledge, 2006. ISBNÃ, 0-415-24000-X, ISBNÃ, 978-0-415-24000-0
External links
- The essay writing category at EnglishGrammar.org
- What is an Essay? from Wikidot
- eText essay in Project Gutenberg
- The Dialectical Essay: Detailed writing guide - Sewanee University
- In the Praise of Essay by Dan Edelstein, Stanford University
- Epoch Times - Critique of modern essays, by Paul Graham
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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