American Essay Research Articles

The Cambridge History of the American Essay ed. by Christy Wampole and Jason Childs (review)

The Cambridge History of the American Essay ed. by Christy Wampole and Jason Childs (review)

Restful Souls: The Representative Men (Yunus Emre and Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Abstract Yunus Emre, the prominent Turkish poet who left his mark on the 13th century, stands out as the most significant folk poet producing poetry in vernacular Turkish. On the other hand, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American essayist, is recognized as one of the most influential thinkers of the 19th century. Despite living in different centuries, the commonality between these two representative figures is love, more precisely Divine love. This article offers a comprehensive analysis of the intellectual realms of Turkish Sufi poet Emre and American thinker Emerson through their profound exploration of love. Focusing on Emre's impact in Turkish Islamic culture and Emerson's role in American Transcendentalism, both are examined as representative men of their eras. The article introduces the similarities of Divine love in the teachings and worldviews of these influential thinkers, and illustrates their contributions to humanity's cultural and intellectual development. Emre and Emerson’s intellectual legacy forms the primary focus of the article and offers a perspective on how their understanding of love significantly shaped humanity's collective consciousness.

The Best American Essays 2023 ed. by Vivian Gornick & Robert Atwan (review)

The Best American Essays 2023 ed. by Vivian Gornick & Robert Atwan (review)

‘Oh, so that’s what it was like!’: The Personal Essay in Hard Times

This article explores characteristics of personal essays, primarily written by American essayists, that appeared in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic and protests against racial injustice that erupted around the U.S. It does so against the historical backdrop of essays that were written during other global hard times, particularly the second wave of the bubonic plague epidemic in the 1500s, when Montaigne wrote The Essays, and the 1918 flu pandemic. It notes significant differences in the contemporary responses – for one, an extraordinary level of detail about life in a pandemic – many of which unite around a communal despair over pandemic losses, outrage at racism, and hope for a better future. One of the challenges faced by essayists in public hard times is how to position their personal experiences amid a public calamity. Writers of colour, the author contends, face additional challenges as they navigate the complexities and pressures of representational narratives.

The Cambridge Companion to the Essay ed. by Kara Wittman and Evan Kindley

Reviewed by: The Cambridge Companion to the Essay ed. by Kara Wittman and Evan Kindley Chris Arthur The Cambridge Companion to the Essay ED. KARA WITTMAN & EVAN KINDLEY Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 2023. 289 pages. SINCE THIS REVIEW is written by an essayist, rather than a literary critic or theorist, I should perhaps begin by sharing the warning given in the editors' introduction: "Remarks by practitioners can be illuminating, but they can also be arcane or partial, focusing on legitimating a particular practice of essay-writing." In what follows, I'll try to incline to illumination rather than obfuscation or partisan advocacy, but it seems only fair to declare at the outset the direction from which any light shed on this book will be coming. The Cambridge Companion to the Essay is one of several recent or imminent publications from university presses that focus on this fascinating literary form. 2020 saw Oxford University Press's On Essays: Montaigne to the Present, edited by Kathryn Murphy and Thomas Karshan. Now, two Companions are appearing almost simultaneously: this one, and The Edinburgh Companion to the Essay. Cambridge University Press is also poised to release The Cambridge History of the American Essay and The Cambridge History of the British Essay. Such a cluster of work surely denotes an interesting shift in academic thinking. Despite the ancientness of the form, essays have received short shrift in the academy compared to poetry, fiction, and drama. The fourth genre has languished in the margins, often confused with those routine academic assignments with which it shares a name, an unfortunate twinning that has done much to obscure the essay's creative potential. On one hand, this abundant crop of scholarship is surely something anyone with a taste for essays will welcome. On the other, I find myself remembering—as a practitioner—the artist (and birdwatcher) Barnett Newman's comment: "Aesthetics is to artists as ornithology is to the birds." No doubt the perspectives offered in the Cambridge Companion will be of interest to scholars. What essayists will make of them is less certain. In Habitations of the Word, William H. Gass suggests that "the essay is obviously the opposite of that awful object, 'the article'" (see WLT, Winter 2000, 4). Though none of the chapters fall squarely within the crosshairs of the type of writing Gass has in his sights, some come uncomfortably close. It's a pity that a companion to the essay could not have been more, well, essayistic. The inclusion of one luminously effective essay among the more article-inclining chapters felt to this reader like a welcome oasis in a desert. Kevin Adonis Browne's beautifully written (and illustrated) "The Photograph as Essay" offers a moving meditation on memory, loss, essay writing, his grandfather, and much else besides. Deserts may make you thirsty, but they're also striking landscapes that can uplift and inspire. Each reader will doubtless find their own favorite features in the topography created by this book's twenty contributors. For me, the standout chapters—apart from Browne's—are Jason Child's "The Essay and the Novel" (though I'm puzzled why this is included in a section headed "Technologies of the Essay"), Daegan Miller's "The Nature Essay," and Jane Hu's "The Essay Online." It's also worth noting that the editors' introduction gives a commendably clear and wide-ranging orientation. Talking of deserts, it's pleasing to see Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire included for 1968 in the book's opening section: "Chronology: 440 Years of Essays." Though this is presented as a "detailed chronology," it's surely more an impressionistic, indeed eccentric list. Choosing items to represent each year of the essay from the publication of Montaigne's Essais in 1580 until 2020 is bound to leave out many worthy candidates. Why, for instance, choose Leslie Marmon Silko's Sacred Water for 1993 rather than The Politics of the Essay: Feminist Perspectives, edited by Ruth-Ellen Boetcher Joeres and Elizabeth Mittman? One omission struck me as particularly odd. The works chosen to represent 1986 are impressive enough in their own right—particularly Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams—but in terms of essay-relevance, that year...

One by One, the Stars

One by One, the Stars

About the Contributors

About the Contributors

Hesitations

Hesitations

В поисках жанра и компромисса: травелоги В. П. Аксенова второй половины 1970-х годов

Enforced balance between the stances of an official Soviet writer and an inner emigrant generates a special poetics of compromise (ambiguity) common to many V. P. Aksyonov’s works of the Era of Stagnation. The focus of this article is the question how this poetics was implemented in the inherently ambivalent genre of travelogue, based on two case studies, his American essays Around the Clock Non-Stop (1976) and his novel In Search of a Genre (1978).

Structural Violence: Let`s Face It

Renowned African American essayist, author, and cultural critic James Baldwin (1962) famously reminded us that “not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced” (p.11). Learning to face and to name that which is in need of transformation, in need of justice, is in some ways the most difficult aspect of social justice work. This is both because we are trained from an early age not to see those injustices (especially when we occupy positions of social privilege) and because the most profound injustices tend to work at a level just below that which we can readily see, recognize, and name. Perhaps the real power of structural violence (sometimes known as institutional violence) is its very invisibility or its ability to skim along just under the surface of the social and individual consciousness, the way it is inextricably part of the warp and weft of society is such that to recognize the violence inherent in our structures and institutions is to question (and to some minds, threaten) the very foundations of a way of life.

The Contemporary American Essay ed. by Phillip Lopate

The Contemporary American Essay ed. by Phillip Lopate

Doeslaïcitétranslate to the American classroom?

This essay reflects on the relevance of French laïcité for the American college classroom. It begins with a discussion of philosopher Catherine Kintzler’s radical interpretation of laïcité as a theory of political association that takes the classroom as its model. According to this view, the autonomous learning contingent on doubt and self-correction that ideally occurs there is the basis for an egalitarian and collaborative production of knowledge, a model of a res publica. The essay then turns to legal scholar and philosopher Anthony Kronman’s analysis of classroom conversation and the “ethics of depersonalization.” It considers the extent to which these notions can be viewed as American translations of Kintzler’s laïcité. The essay concludes with a reading of American essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates’s bestselling 2015 memoir as an endorsement of the autonomous abstract individual, the linchpin of republican universalism, laïcité, and liberal education.

Cheryl Wall, In Memoriam

The distinguished critic Professor Cheryl A. Wall (1948–2020) was the Board of Governors Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Her path-breaking scholarship in two highly influential monographs, Women of the Harlem Renaissance (1995) and Worrying the Line: Black Women Writers, Lineage, and Literary Tradition (2005), helped to ensure that twentieth-century Black women writers were recognized and valued for their power, genius, and complexity. Her most recent book, On Freedom and the Will to Adorn: The Art of the African American Essay (2018), places the essay form at the center of African American literary achievement. Throughout her long career she supported and enabled Black students, and championed racial diversity and gender equality at every level of the university. An Associate Editor of James Baldwin Review, she was the most generous and astute of readers, as well as a wise editor. In this memorial section, fifteen colleagues, former students, and interlocutors share their remembrances and honor her legacy.

On Freedom and the Will to Adorn: The Art of the African American EssayEmpire of Ruin: Black Classicism and American Imperial CultureReaping Something New: African American Transformations of Victorian Literature

On Freedom and the Will to Adorn: The Art of the African American EssayEmpire of Ruin: Black Classicism and American Imperial CultureReaping Something New: African American Transformations of Victorian Literature

Global Paradox of Race Spiritual Transcendence


 
 This paper is a critical analysis of the poem “Indigo Brown” by Will Cox, a Modern American prolific writer, poet, philosopher, essayist, vociferous activist and humanist. It is an in-depth study to inspire people to get rid of their ego and live through their soul. The poet has introduced the idea of negative capability as he believes that the societal taboos lead to intellectual muddle and insecurity. The poet draws a bridge between the never ending heartaches of the past and connects them beautifully with the present state where he has gathered himself and lifts his head to reconcile with the never changing customs. However, the question of freedom has an everlasting impression at the back of his head and expresses a desire to transcendence to a spiritual realm, traveling beyond time to purify his soul from the unworthy assertions society has labeled him with. His style is direct and rhetoric and he uses significant symbols, imageries and literary devices and also uses authorial intrusion to establish his point of view
 
 
 
 

Cruising the Hyper-Real Highway: Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver

Research Article| April 01 2021 Cruising the Hyper-Real Highway: Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver Derek Dubois Derek Dubois Derek Dubois is an award-winning writer and filmmaker and an adjunct professor of film studies at Rhode Island College and Clark University. His work has appeared in the peer-reviewed journals Film International, Short Film Studies, Supernatural Studies, and others. Most recently, his literary nonfiction piece “Little Swimmers” was selected as a notable work by the 2019 Best American Essays series. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Film and Video (2021) 73 (1): 48–58. https://doi.org/10.5406/jfilmvideo.73.1.0048 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Derek Dubois; Cruising the Hyper-Real Highway: Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver. Journal of Film and Video 1 January 2021; 73 (1): 48–58. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jfilmvideo.73.1.0048 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of Film and Video Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2021 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2021 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Crafting Presence: The American Essay and the Future of Writing Studies

Crafting Presence: The American Essay and the Future of Writing Studies

Material Exchange, Symbolic Recognition: Weltliteratur as Discourse and Practice in Goethe, Carlyle, and Emerson

ABSTRACT Thomas Carlyle’s activity as a translator and promoter of German literature in nineteenth-century Britain was among the chief signs the ageing Goethe read as inaugurating ‘the epoch of world literature’. American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, who became Carlyle’s transatlantic friend and ally soon after Goethe’s death, shared the impression that their contemporary moment witnessed global contact and exchange on an unprecedented scale. Reconsidering the Goethe–Carlyle–Emerson nexus through the lens of the concrete materiality of their transnational interactions, this essay demonstrates that Weltliteratur to the three of them was something discursive as well as material, textual as well as social, and theoretical as well as practical.

On Essays: Montaigne to the Present by Thomas Karshan Kathryn Murphy

BOOKS IN REVIEW On Essays: Montaigne to the Present Ed. Thomas Karshan & Kathryn Murphy Oxford. Oxford University Press. 2020. 380 pages. IN HER INTRODUCTION to The Best American Essays 1992, Susan Sontag writes: “The culture administered by universities has always regarded the essay with suspicion.” Twenty-eight years later, does the appearance of On Essays: Montaigne to the Present —produced by one of the world’s premier university publishers and written by academics—indicate a change of heart? Scholars are certainly showing signs of a dawning awareness that this is an area worth exploring. Thomas Karshan and Kathryn Murphy are correct that the twenty-first century is witnessing “a revival of interest in the essay form.” In similar vein, Felicity James—who contributes an excellent chapter on Charles Lamb—talks about the essay today being “rediscovered and reinvented.” And, in another essayfocused volume published in 2020—Imagined Spaces, edited by Gail Low and Kirsty Gunn—no less an authority than Phillip Lopate adds his voice to this idea of a contemporary essay-renaissance. Though the essay has long been “neglected at a theoretical level,” Lopate reckons this “is beginning to change.” In evidence he cites recent conferences and books that have started to construct “a poetics and ideology of the essay.” But although there are signs that the attitude Sontag noted in 1992 is changing, it would be premature to see the essay being comfortably ensconced in the standard syllabus of literary concerns, its pariah status exchanged for the same kind of mantle of genrerespectability that scholarship has draped so thickly over novels and poetry. Theodor Adorno—whose theoretical work on the essay remains an important touchstone—recognized heresy as “the law of the innermost form” of this type of writing. The essay is an independent, even outlaw genre that likes to go its own way. Orthodoxy and conformity are anathema to it. As such, it is resistant to the kind of categories scholars bring to bear. Karshan and Murphy talk about “the various ways in which the essay bristles ON ESSAYS 114 WLT SPRING 2021 against academic writing.” Specifically, they identify its “resistance to introductions , to generalization and abstraction, to accounts of its origins, its freedom from discipline, rules, and criteria.” In other words, the essay swims against the current in which books like this are written. Essayists should not be surprised, therefore, if they experience a certain bristling as they read—but there is also much to engage their interest. Attempting to summarize the book’s seventeen chapters is beyond the reach of a brief review. Instead, as a way of indicating something of the spread of topics, let me pick out a few points that struck me. Fred Parker’s chapter on David Hume offers a refreshing perspective on this key Scottish thinker by arguing that it was “as an essayist , not a philosopher, that Hume made his name.” Scott Black makes a convincing case for seeing Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy as more an essay than a novel, flagging up “digression, irregularity, wildness” and “discursive wandering about” as some of its most striking essaylike features. Tom Wright’s examination of the “voiced essay” in Carlyle and Emerson—both of whom spoke to live audiences as well as producing written texts—provides persuasive evidence that the essay “has never been solely introspective or intimate.” Michael Wood—in a chapter that nicely complements those on Hume and Sterne—looks at “Essayism in the British novel after Borges.” His comments on Julian Barnes are particularly good. Writing on “The Psychoanalyst and the Essay,” Adam Phillips shows how, for those professionally engaged in this area, calling their books essay collections “is like a declaration of independence.” Looking at the essay’s “genial scepticism” and “hospitable curiosity,” Phillips makes the intriguing suggestion that “the essay can be, to put it psychoanalytically, the genre in which we are free of tyrannical parents.” Christy Wampole contributes a photo essay on Salvador Dalí’s illustrations for an edition of Montaigne’s essays published by Doubleday in 1947. In a fascinating aside she speculates that if Montaigne had had a camera, he “would have left behind a different kind of cultural artefact.” Other chapters range...

R.W. Emerson's Views on the Nature of Historical Knowledge

In his moral philosophy of transcendentalism the American essayist, lecturer and poet R.W. Emerson (1803–1882) reflected the quest of a whole generation of American intellectuals for a new spirituality in the first half of the 19th century. Rooted in the heritage of Protestant faith and culture, like many of his ancestors for two centuries, Emerson received spiritual training and education and began his ministry as a pastor of one of the oldest parishes in Boston. However, later, in the course of spiritual and philosophical inquiries, he changed both his worldview and the nature of his creative activity. Emerson evolved from being a pastor for a local community to a popular lecturer to mass audiences across America's cities and states. Considering this change, the paper traces the genesis of R.W. Emerson's historical epistemology as it developed from his early writings (sermons and notebooks, including correspondence) towards his lectures and essays. We start by discussing the interest of Nietzsche in historical ideas of Emerson, identify the points at which their concepts diverge in their attitude towards doctrines of Christianity. We immerse Emerson's perceptions of history in the context of covenant theology, the meaning of Lord's Supper and the nature of Christ as expressed in the opinions of the ministers of Congregational and Unitarian Churches in Massachusetts. Special attention is paid to Emerson's concept of history denying Gospel events as the centre of the world's history and implying a possibility for an authentic and credible reenactment of historical events within the subjective experience of an individual. The analysis involves the essay History, Sermons No.5 and No.162, the Lectures on the Gospels and on the Philosophy of History.