Abstract
The essay is part confession, part discursive argument, and part narrative—it is like a diary, a scholarly article, and a story all in one. It is a genre legitimated by its existence outside any genre. If it treats the reader as confidant to sincere outpourings of the heart, it becomes a confession or a diary. If it fascinates the reader with logical arguments and dialectical controversies, or if it thematizes the process of generation of meaning, then it becomes scholarly discourse or a learned treatise. If it lapses into a narrative mode and organizes events into a plot, it inadvertently turns into a novella, a short story, or a tale.
Translated from Russian by Slobodanka Vladiv-Glover.
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Notes
For a more systematic exploration of this genre see Mikhail Epstein, “At the Crossroads of Image and Concept: Essayism in the Culture of the Modern Age,” in his book After the Future: The Paradoxes of Postmodernism and Contemporary Russian Culture (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press 1995): 213–253, and “Esseistika kak nulevaia distsiplina” (Essayistics as a Zero Discipline), in his book Bog detalei. Esseistika 1977–1988 (Moscow, LIA Elinina, 1998): 225–240.
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© 1999 Ellen E. Berry, Mikhail N. Epstein
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Epstein, M. (1999). An Essay On the Essay. In: Transcultural Experiments. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780312299712_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780312299712_16
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