On Essays

Montaigne to the Present

Thomas Karshan editor Kathryn Murphy editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:3rd Sep '20

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On Essays cover

Montaigne called it a ramble; Chesterton the joke of literature; and Hume an ambassador between the worlds of learning and of conversation. But what is an essay, and how did it emerge as a literary form? What are the continuities and contradictions across its history, from Montaigne's 1580 Essais through the familiar intimacies of the Romantic essay, and up to more recent essayists such as Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, and Claudia Rankine? Sometimes called the fourth genre, the essay has been over-shadowed in literary history by fiction, poetry, and drama, and has proved notoriously resistant to definition. On Essays reveals in the essay a pattern of paradox: at once a pedagogical tool and a refusal of the methodical languages of universities and professions; politically engaged but retired and independent; erudite and anti-pedantic; occasional and enduring; intimate and oratorical; allusive and idiosyncratic. Perhaps because it is a form of writing against which literary scholarship has defined itself, there has been surprisingly little work on the tradition of the essay. Neither a comprehensive history nor a student companion, On Essays is a series of seventeen elegantly written essays on authors and aspects in the history of the genre — essays which, taken together, form the most substantial book yet published on the essay in Britain and America.

Original research, innovative analysis, and clear writing make this ode to the essay an exemplary piece of scholarship. Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. * C. B. Kerr, CHOICE *
... there is also much to engage [essayists'] interest. Attempting to summarize the book's seventeen chapters is beyond the reach of a brief review... It's... welcome to see editors of anthologies being credited for doing "important work in framing their topics". * Chris Arthur, St. Andrews, Scotland, World Literature Today *
There is a tact ingrained in the scholarship of On Essays, almost always suggestive but very rarely showing off or settling scores. I thoroughly enjoyed it and thoroughly recommend it. * David Woodhouse, Hazlitt Review *

  • Winner of CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2021.

ISBN: 9780198707868

Dimensions: 242mm x 165mm x 29mm

Weight: 760g

400 pages