Personal Essay

Personal Essay
   Modern Existentialism Is Captured in the Personal Essay
   The hallmark of the personal essay is its intimacy. The writer seems to be speaking directly into your ear, confiding everything from gossip to wisdom. Through sharing thoughts, memories, desires, complaints, and whimsies, the personal essayist sets up a relationship with the reader, a dialogue-a friendship, if you will, based on identification, understanding, testiness, and companionship.
   At the core of the personal essay is the supposition that there is a certain unity to human experience. As Michel de Montaigne, the great innovator and patron saint of personal essayists, put it, "Every man has within himself the entire human condition." . . .
   In the final analysis, the personal essay represents a mode of being. It points a way for the self to function with relative freedom in an uncertain world. Skeptical yet gyroscopically poised, undeceived but finally tolerant of flaws and inconsistencies, this mode of being suits the modern existential situation, which Montaigne first diagnosed. His recognition that human beings were surrounded by darkness, with nothing particularly solid to cling to, led to a philosophical acceptance that one had to make oneself up from moment to moment. (Lopate, 1994, pp. xxiii, xliv)

Historical dictionary of quotations in cognitive science. . 2015.

Игры ⚽ Нужен реферат?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Essay — An essay is usually a short piece of writing. It is often written from an author s personal point of view. Essays can be literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of… …   Wikipedia

  • essay — essayer, n. n. /es ay/ for 1, 2; /es ay, e say / for 3 5; v. /e say /, n. 1. a short literary composition on a particular theme or subject, usually in prose and generally analytic, speculative, or interpretative. 2. anything resembling such a… …   Universalium

  • Personal identity (philosophy) — In philosophy, personal identity refers to the essence of a self conscious person, that which makes him or her unique. It persists making the person modifications happen through one single identity.DescriptionThe question regarding personal… …   Wikipedia

  • essay — noun … OF ESSAYS ▪ anthology, collection, selection, series, set, volume ▪ In 2001 she published a collection of essays. VERB + ESSAY …   Collocations dictionary

  • Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc — Mark Twain s work on Joan of Arc is titled in full Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, by the Sieur Louis de Conte who is identified further as Joan s page and secretary. The work is fictionally presented as a translation from the manuscript… …   Wikipedia

  • Personal injury lawyer — A personal injury lawyer is a lawyer who provides legal representation to those who claim to have been injured, physically or psychologically, as a result of the negligence or wrongdoing of another person, company, government agency, or other… …   Wikipedia

  • Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant — The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant is an autobiography of American President Ulysses S. Grant, focused mainly on the general s actions during the American Civil War. Written as Grant was dying of throat cancer in 1885, the two volume set… …   Wikipedia

  • essay — I. transitive verb Date: 14th century 1. to put to a test 2. to make an often tentative or experimental effort to perform ; try Synonyms: see attempt • essayer noun II. noun Etymology …   New Collegiate Dictionary

  • Personal relationships of James I of England — The personal relationships of James I of England included relationships with his male courtiers and his marriage to Anne of Denmark, with whom he fathered children. The influence his favourites had on politics, and the resentment at the wealth… …   Wikipedia

  • The Personal Heresy — Jack’s “Personal Heresy”: The Politics of Poetics [http://www.pseudobook.com/cslewis/?p=59] Summary The Personal Heresy is a series of articles, three each by C.S. Lewis and E.M.W. (Eustace Mandeville Wetenhall) Tillyard, first published on April …   Wikipedia

  • Ward Churchill 9/11 essay controversy — Ward Churchill, former ethnic studies professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, wrote an essay in September 2001 titled about the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which he argued that American foreign policies provoked the attacks. He… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
… Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”