What is an Essay?

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What is an Essay?

• Foundational Studies

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Definition

• An essay is a fairly brief analytic or
  interpretative literary piece of non-fiction that
  tries to assert a particular point of view in a
  fresh, creative, and insightful way.But what
  does this mean?

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It is fairly brief

• The word essay usually refers to short pieces
  that may be published in magazines or newspapers.
• In college writing, an essay may range in size
  from a few paragraphs to 10-15 pages
  (undergraduate level) or 30 pages (graduate
  classes), 200 pages (Masters thesis) or 500
  pages (Ph.D. Dissertation).

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It is analytic or interpretative

• In an essay, the writer presents his or her own
  analysis or interpretation of whatever topic (or
  portion of the topic) has been chosen for the
  writing.
• An essay is not a report. A report presents only
  the facts and evidence, it does not include any
  of the views, perceptions, thoughts, beliefs, or
  feelings of the writer. An essay does.
• This means an essay is, by definition, an opinion
  piece.

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It is a literary piece

• Like other forms of literature (fiction, poetry,
  and drama), essays are written using creative
  literary techniques.
• This means in writing essays, you want to use
  description, imagery, analogies, figurative
  language (such as similes, metaphors, symbols,
  apostrophes, synecdoches), dialogue, flashbacks,
  etc., as well as perhaps summaries, paraphrases,
  direct and indirect quotes.

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It is a literary piece of non-fiction

• Although the essay is a literary form, it is
  strictly a piece of non-fiction. This means that
  the writer of an essay is trying to tell the
  truth, not just to entertain.
• To say that an essay is non-fiction doesnt mean
  that every word is literally true it may include
  hypothetical examples or quotes from fictional
  works to support or illustrate the truth being
  expressed by the writer.

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It asserts a particular point of view

• This is perhaps the most important and the most
  challenging aspect of an essay.
• This is what separates an essay from other forms
  of non-fiction, such as an article in a newspaper
  or encyclopedia. It aims to support a single
  claim.
• An essay isnt just about a topic its purpose to
  illustrate, demonstrate, or further develop a
  single statement, called a thesis.

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Its fresh, creative, and insightful.

• An essay seeks to find a new and different way of
  approaching a topic. It doesnt just present the
  same information same views as everyone else.
• It explores what viewpoints have been expressed
  (research) and then seeks to present it in a
  different way highlight ideas, connections,
  inferences, or underlying motivations or contexts
  that havent been discussed, or argue ideas,
  definitions, inferences, deductions, etc., made
  by others.

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Its fresh, creative, and insightful

• Therefore, you do not want to follow the crowd
  in how you understand and discuss the subject
  but you want to discover your own views, your own
  thoughts, your own voice.
• An observer and a painter may look at the same
  scene, but through the painters creative eye,
  he may highlight some aspect of the scene that
  the observer failed to see. In writing an essay,
  you should strive to be the painter not the
  observer.

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In other words --

• An essay does not just regurgitate information
  that others have written or expressed.
• It tries to add to the conversation by adding
  something new something different.
• It expresses its ideas with such clarity, unique
  imagery, description, analogies, etc., that the
  reader gains a whole new perspective and feel for
  the subject through the writers literary work.

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