The Cambridge Companion to The Essay

The book studies the history and theory of the essay and its social, political, and aesthetic contexts.

Kara Wittman (Edited by), Evan Kindley (Edited by)

9781316519776, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 3 November 2022

300 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 2.4 cm, 0.64 kg

'[the authors] have certainly made some valuable contributions to the ongoing task of broadening ideas about a genre that's still too often misperceived.' Chris Arthur, World Literature Today

The Cambridge Companion to the Essay considers the history, theory, and aesthetics of the essay from the moment it's named in the late sixteenth century to the present. What is an essay? What can the essay do or think or reveal or know that other literary forms cannot? What makes a piece of writing essayistic? How can essays bring about change? Over the course of seventeen chapters by a diverse group of scholars, The Companion reads the essay in relation to poetry, fiction, natural science, philosophy, critical theory, postcolonial and decolonial thinking, studies in race and gender, queer theory, and the history of literary criticism. This book studies the essay in its written, photographic, cinematic, and digital forms, with a special emphasis on how the essay is being reshaped and reimagined in the twenty-first century, making it a crucial resource for scholars, students, and essayists.

Part I. Forms of the Essay: 1. Remembering the essay Jeff Dolven
2. The personal essay Merve Emre
3. The critical essay Frances Ferguson
4. The nature essay Daegan Miller
5. The essay in theory Kara Wittman
Part II. The Work of the Essay: 6. Essay and experiment Julianne Werlin
7. Essay, enlightenment, revolution Anahid Nersessian
8. The essay, abolition, and racial blackness Jesse McCarthy
9. The Utopian essay Ignacio M. Sánchez-Prado
10. Ethics and the essay David Russell
11. Essay and empire Saikat Majumdar
12. Unqueering the essay Grace Lavery
Part III. Technologies of the Essay: 13. The essay and the novel Jason Childs
14. Lyric, essay Claire Grossman, Juliana Spahr, and Stephanie Young
15. The photograph as essay Kevin Adonis Browne
16. The essay film Nora M. Alter
17. The essay online Jane Hu.

Subject Areas: Ethnic minorities & multicultural studies [JFSL1], Gender studies, gender groups [JFSJ], Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary theory [DSA]